Irene Tinker is Professor Emerita in the Departments of City and Regional Planning & Women's Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, teaching from 1989–1998. She was the founding Board president of the International Center for Research on Women, founder and director of the Equity Policy Center and co-founder of the Wellesley Center for Research on Women.
Recent publications focus on economic and political empowerment for women: “Alleviating Poverty: Investing in Women’s Work,” in the Journal of the American Planning Association; “Quotas for Women in Elected Legislatures: Do They Really Empower Women?”; “Many Paths to Power: Women in Contemporary Asia”; and “Utilizing Interdisciplinarity to Analyze Global Socio-Economic Change: A Tribute to Ester Boserup.” Her chapter “Empowerment Just Happened: The Unexpected Expansion of Women's Organizations” appears in Women and Gender Equity in Development Theory and Practice, a volume dedicated to her “in recognition of her role as key intellectual provocateur in the field of women/gender and development.”