Aditi Bhowmick, an Indian PhD candidate at Harvard, is leading a research project on gendered climate vulnerability in India after receiving a Mittal Institute Faculty Climate Research Grant. The project investigates the links between climate change and adverse gender outcomes, particularly child marriage. It aims to fill research gaps using historical and modern data and will make its findings available as a public resource.
Aditi Bhowmick, an Indian doctoral candidate specializing in Development Economics and Labor Economics, has received a prestigious Mittal Institute Faculty Climate Research Grant at Harvard University. In collaboration with Eliana La Ferrara, a Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, she will lead an innovative research initiative that examines gendered climate vulnerability in India. This project reflects her dedication to addressing social and economic inequalities through meticulous research.
The Mittal Institute Faculty Climate Research Grants aim to enhance scholarly engagement with climate change issues in South Asia, create new knowledge, and develop sustainable solutions. Research projects funded by these grants focus on three primary categories: energy transition and energy policy; food systems, agriculture, and land use; and the legal and policy frameworks for climate transition and adaptation.
The researchers observe that climate change-related disasters, including droughts, floods, and heatwaves, threaten decades of advancement in gender equity within South Asia. They highlight troubling trends, such as the emergence of “climate brides”—young girls coerced into marriage due to extreme weather events, despite prohibitive laws against child marriage in the region. Such circumstances exacerbate teenage pregnancies, maternal health issues, domestic violence, and adverse child health outcomes, solidifying existing health disparities.
Bhowmick and La Ferrara intend to confront the lack of systematic research on the intersection of climate impacts and gender and health disparities in India. Their project will leverage historical ethnographic archives, modern census data, and satellite information reflecting climate and economic shocks across India’s numerous villages and towns, aiming to fill a critical knowledge gap.
The research will explore essential questions: a) What is the causal link between climate change and detrimental gender and health outcomes, particularly child marriage, in rural India? b) How do localized historical social norms influence this relationship? Their findings will contribute to a shared digital data infrastructure, which aims to facilitate interdisciplinary scholarly inquiry and policymaking.
By integrating community-level norms data with demographic and economic indicators, including census and satellite data, the project seeks to empower researchers, policymakers, and civil society organizations to effectively address the gender inequities exacerbated by climate change in India. Bhowmick is in her second year of doctoral studies at Harvard Kennedy School, pursuing a track in Public Policy (Economics) and is also a PhD Scholar at the Stone Program, focusing on wealth distribution, inequality, and social policy with a specific interest in social norms and gender disparities in developing nations.
Aditi Bhowmick’s receipt of the Mittal Institute Faculty Climate Research Grant marks a significant advancement in addressing gendered vulnerabilities resulting from climate change in India. The collaborative research project she leads will harness extensive data to better understand the complexities of climate effects on gender and health outcomes. By bridging critical gaps in research and disseminating findings as public knowledge, this initiative aims to foster informed policies and solutions to enhance gender equity amidst climate challenges.
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