My research uses ethnographic and quantitative methods to study how power operates in development policies, with a focus on gender data, social protection, and care work. I’m building on my book, Unjust conditions: Women’s work and the hidden cost of cash transfer programs (University of California Press, Open Access), which focused on one of the world’s biggest anti-poverty programs, to explore the gendered implications of ‘data-driven development.’ For example, how does the ‘Gender Data Gap’ shape what gets prioritized, and who gets funded, when it comes to development policies and programming? And how are technology and data science changing the field of Gender and Development? What happens when tech companies invest more in data than most nation states, or when digital technologies are increasingly used to deliver development programs and services?

I’m embarking on a few new projects to explore these questions, including a collaborative, participatory action project on social protection and gender-based violence at the Colombia-Venezuela border, a global analysis of aging and care in national social protection policies, and ethnographic research on global-local connections in a region of rural development in B.C.

2021

Zulver J., Cookson T.P. & Fuentes L. “COVID-19 and gender-based violence: Insights from a ‘data for development’ project on the Colombia-Venezuela border.” International Feminist Journal of Politics. Forthcoming.

2020

Cookson T.P., Jha S., Fuentes L. & Saxena A. (2020). “Programmatic norms change to eliminate violence against children: Insights for practitioners and researchers from a UNICEF global mapping study.” Global Public Health. Online ahead of print. https://doi.org/10.1080/17441692.2020.1839931

Fuentes, L. & Cookson, T.P. (2020). “Counting gender (in) equality? a feminist geographical critique of the ‘gender data revolution’.” Gender, Place & Culture. 27(6), 881-902. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2019.1681371

Cookson T.P., Carlitz R., Fuentes L., & Berryhill A. (2020). Gender Equality at Home Report: A Gender Data Snapshot of Life During COVID-19. San Francisco: Facebook. https://dataforgood.fb.com/docs/gendersurveyreport/

Cookson, T.P., Fuentes, L., Zulver, J. & Langworthy, M. (2020). Building alliances for gender Equality: How the tech community can strengthen the gender data ecosystem. Ladysmith and Facebook. https://ladysmithcollective.com/report-building-alliances-for-gender-equality/

2019

Cookson, T.P. & Kofman, E. (2019). “Families on the Move.” In Progress of the World’s Women 2019-2020: Families in a Changing World. New York: UN Women. Report available in English, French, Spanish, Russian and Arabic. https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/progress-of-the-worlds-women

Cookson, T.P. (2019). Family Oriented Cash Transfers from a Gender Perspective: Are Conditionalities Really Justified? New York: UN Women. http://bit.ly/AreConditionalitiesJustified

2018

Cookson, T.P. (2018). Unjust conditions: Women’s work and the hidden cost of cash transfer programs. University of California Press. Available Open Access. https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.49

Cookson, T.P. (2018). Social Protection and Access to Public Services in the Age of Conditionality. Expert Paper prepared for the 63rd session of the Commission on the Status of Women, United Nations. http://bit.ly/CSW63Conditionalities

Cookson, T.P. (2018). Peruvian mothers contending with conditional aid and its selective inattention to the conditions of rural life. In: Money from the Government in Latin America: Conditional Cash Transfers and Rural Lives. Eds. Balen, M.E. & Fotta, M. Oxford, UK: Routledge.

2017

Cookson, T.P. (2017). The Unseen Gender Impact of Conditionality: Extra-Official Conditions. UNDP International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth. Published in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese. http://www.ipc-undp.org/pub/eng/OP345_The_unseen_gender_impact_of_conditionality.pdf

Jha, S., Saxena, A. & Cookson, T.P. (2017). Women migrant workers in the ASEAN Economic Community. Bangkok: UN Women. http://bit.ly/ASEANempowerment

2016

Cookson, T.P. (2016). “Working for Inclusion? Conditional Cash Transfers, Rural Women, and the Reproduction of Inequality.” Antipode, 48(5), 1187-1205. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12256

Holeman, I., Cookson, T. P., & Pagliari, C. (2016). “Digital technology for health sector governance in low and middle income countries: a scoping review.” Journal of global health, 6(2). https://doi.org/10.7189/jogh.06.020408