Brulé Wins Prestigious NSF Career Award for Women’s Empowerment Research
Rachel Brulé, Associate Professor of Global Development Policy at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, has been awarded a prestigious career grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The five-year $628,039 award will support her project titled “Dynamics of Women’s Political and Economic Empowerment: An Open Database Project.”
Professor Brulé’s research focuses on comparative politics with an emphasis on gender, political economy, and institutions. Her work explores how gender equality is promoted and existing social hierarchies are challenged, particularly in the context of women’s political representation, inheritance rights, and cultural norms. This new NSF-funded project aligns closely with her expertise, aiming to investigate the conditions that foster gender equality and the role of women’s solidarity in achieving it.
The project comes at a critical time when many countries, including the United States, are experiencing contradictory trends: increasing opportunities for women resulting from economic growth, alongside growing barriers limiting women’s voice and agency across work, social, and political settings.
Brulé’s NSF project will leverage innovative multi-method data generation to document the scope of gendered agency and women’s solidarity across space and time. She is working to develop a theoretical framework to explain the global dynamics of gender equality. Brulé theorizes that shifts in gendered rights and resources can increase backlash to gender equality, but they can also open windows for transformative changes in favor of equality, depending on the nature of gendered solidarity. She will hone and test her original theory on the causes and consequences of gender equality—and backlash—by leveraging natural experiments that bring about “as-if random” changes in women’s rights alongside intensive field research and field experiments.
A key component of the project is the creation of an Open Database Project, which will establish a replicable system for data collection, processing, and analysis. This database will focus on four core case studies and aims to analyze geospatial patterns of gendered agency in relation to rights, resources, networks, and power.
The educational aspect of the project is equally significant. Brulé will implement a multi-faceted program involving students from various disciplines, including social science, law, gender studies, and data science, in hands-on research experiences.
This career award not only recognizes Professor Brulé’s potential as a leader in her field but also supports her vision of deploying data science to advance understanding of gender equality dynamics. The project’s outcomes have the potential to inform policies and practices that could enhance women’s empowerment and societal welfare both in the United States and globally.
Professor Brulé brings a wealth of experience to this project. Her first book, “Women, Power, and Property: The Paradox of Gender Equality Laws in India,” was awarded the American Political Science Association’s 2021 Luebbert Prize for the Best Book in Comparative Politics. Her work has been published in prestigious journals such as the Journal of Politics and the Journal of Development Economics, and has been featured in major media outlets including the New York Times and the Washington Post.
The NSF career award, which commenced on July 1, 2024, and is expected to run through June 30, 2029, reflects the NSF’s commitment to supporting cutting-edge research that combines intellectual merit with broader societal impacts. It also aligns with Brulé’s ongoing work, including her co-founding of the Alliance for Afghan Women’s Economic Empowerment with the US State Department, launched by Secretary Blinken in September 2022.
Rachel Brulé is an Associate Professor of Global Development Policy at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University and Associate Director of the Global Development Policy Center’s Human Capital Initiative. Her research interests are broadly in comparative politics, international development, political economy, and gender, with a geographical focus on South Asia. Read more about Professor Brulé on her faculty profile.