Cynthia Horne Participates in Collaborative Research Project with the National University of Mongolia

With generous support from Western Washington University, the John C Street Fund for Mongolia, and the Institute for Global Engagement, Professor Cynthia Horne spent a month this summer working on a collaborative research project at the National University of Mongolia.  She also gave a talk on June 18 at The American Center for Mongolian Studies in Ulaanbatur on "Globalization and Women's Empowerment in Mongolia." 

Dr. Horne's teaching and research focuses on international political economy issues, with attention to globalization, trade policy, and development. The globalization literature suggests that more globalization will catalyze a variety of national level economic, political and social changes in a country. Some of those changes could be positive for a country, such as possibilities for economic growth and democratization, while other changes might be negative, including rising inequality and material losses for parts of a traditional economy.  In terms of conditional effects, scholars and policy practitioners have found that globalization disproportionately and positively affects women both economically and socially.

Dr. Horne's current research explores whether these trends hold for Mongolia.  Attending to the unique features of Mongolian culture, Mongolia’s transition from a Soviet style political economy, and Mongolia’s resource-based economy, how have women been impacted by globalization over the past 25 years?  This project explores the possibly gendered effects of globalization, attending to rural/urban divisions, educational and occupational variation, and age differences to examine conditional effects of different types of globalization on women’s empowerment in post-transition Mongolia.