Tara Cookson has just returned to Kelowna after completing a PhD at the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England on the topic of poverty and inequality in the developing world.
Cookson will graduate in October, and she is particularly interested in how women in poverty make ends meet in their everyday lives. She just finished studying Peru’s largest anti-poverty program, and explained that her interest in women living in poverty began while she was in Kelowna.
“I had become really interested in equality studies here at UBCO when I was doing my undergrad in international relations,” Cookson described. “I had some really awesome teachers in political science that had done a lot of work in Latin America, and then I had others that were gender studies professors, so I kind of had this dual interest in Latin America in gender and poverty. I went to Brazil to teach English for a year, and that experience really opened my eyes to how different countries can offer their citizens different lifestyles and different quality of life. Back in Kelowna I started volunteering with the Kelowna Women’s Resource Centre, and became very interested in how low income women basically survive and provide for their families.”
She then began to undertake more research projects in the topic, eventually completing a Master’s in women and gender studies. From there Cookson was selected as one of 90 recipients of the Gates Cambridge Scholarship out of 2,000 applicants, and she was off to England for four years.
“I’ve spent the past four years with a group of colleagues that come from all over the world and study completely different things from physics to astronomy to economics and medicine,” Cookson recalled. “To get to brainstorm with them and learn from what they do and be pushed to learn about things in a way that’s broader, it really kind of pushes my own boundaries and way of seeing the world. I think it’s been a really formative experience.”
The Gates Cambridge Scholarship is awarded to students who display excellence in research, leadership potential and a commitment to improving the lives of others—all attributes she will be using in what she plans to do next. With her PhD now complete, Cookson plans to work in both policy and academia, working on critical research on issues of inequality and gender, getting to teach and applying her research by working with governments and businesses that want to make things better.
“I’ve always wanted to have a foot in both worlds, that’s always the thing that’s interested me and that was the same here at UBCO,” she explained. “Being in the classroom all day long and then going to the Women’s Resource Centre, and actually being able to put into practice some of the things that I’d been learning.”
Cookson’s research for her PhD has led to her becoming more passionate about getting women into leadership positions. She noted that in her research, she saw that many policies created to help people in poverty had a negative, unintended impact on women because women weren’t involved in creating the policies. She explained more pointed efforts need to be made to help women get into leadership positions where they can help with those policies, as we can’t just hope and assume that one day it will happen on its own.
With a very bright future ahead of her in her chosen field, Cookson’s next, immediate project is to publish her thesis. She joked that it’s currently in a form that’s hard for even her to read, and she wants to take the really interesting research and ideas from it and put them into a book.
Cookson’s drive to help others, scholarly experience and determination to make a difference are what make her a Woman to Watch.
Crowe MacKay’s Women to Watch program is a weekly feature that profiles remarkable women in our community, concluding October 16th. After terrific response, the nomination period for 2015 is now closed. Watch this space each week to see our remaining Women to Watch.
