Caren Grown is an internationally recognized expert on gender issues in development. Dr. Grown joined the World Bank in 2014 as Global Director of the World Bank’s Gender Group, where she has led the institution’s development and implementation of a Gender Strategy that deliberately and strategically targets gaps in endowments, jobs, assets, and increasing women’s leadership and voice. Dr. Grown leads collaboration across the World Bank Group and with development partners to generate evidence on what boosts gender equality, and to identify emerging challenges and opportunities to close the gaps between men and women.   

Prior to joining the World Bank Group, Dr. Grown was economist-in-residence and co-director of the Program on Gender Analysis in Economics at American University in Washington, D.C. Over the course of her career Dr. Grown has led efforts on gender equality for a number of organizations, including the UNU-WIDER program on aid effectiveness and gender equality, as Senior Gender Advisor at USAID where she led the development of the Agency’s Gender Equality policy, and as senior scholar and co-director of the Gender Equality and Economy Program at The Levy Economics Institute at Bard College.

Dr. Grown has authored and edited several books including Taxation and Gender Equity, co-edited with Imraan Valodia (Routledge 2010), The Feminist Economics of Trade, co-edited with Irene Van Staveren, Diane Elson, and Nilufer Cagatay (Routledge 2007), and Trading Women's Health and Rights: the Role of Trade Liberalization and Development, co-edited with Elissa Braunstein and Anju Malhotra (Zed Books 2006). She is the author (with Geeta Rao Gupta) of Taking Action: Achieving Gender Equality and Empowering Women (Earthscan Press 2005) and co-author with Gita Sen of Development, Crises and Alternative Visions: Third World Women's Perspectives (Monthly Review Press 1987). Her articles have appeared in World Development, Journal of International Development, Feminist Economics, Health Policy and Planning, and The Lancet.

Dr. Grown was an associate editor of Feminist Economics (2007-2014), a founding member of the International Working Group on Gender and Macroeconomics, and a member of the Women and Gender Equity Knowledge Hub, Commission on the Social Determinants of Health. She holds a PhD and MA in Economics from the New School for Social Research and Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles.