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AREAS OF ACADEMIC INTEREST
Sustainable Development
Gender Equality:
Women's Empowerment
Critical Masculinities
Transformation and Social Change Theories
Education Technologies
Implementation Sciences
Contact me
Email:
christopher (at) clcoley (dot) com
Address:
M.A. Center Chicago
41W501, Keslinger Rd
Elburn, IL 60119, United States
About Chris
About Chris
Welcome!
I am currently the Head of Program for the newly established M.Sc. in Social Data Science & Policy department at Amrita University, Faridabad, India under the Amrita University School of Social & Behavioural Sciences. My role encompasses administration, teaching and research, but my primary objective is to explore the intersections of gender equality and sustainable development in the local, national, and global contexts. My personal research interests include understanding critical masculinities as they relate to women's empowerment, and the impacts of multi-dimensional poverty on individual and community resilience.
I am also an a Researcher and Program Manager at Amrita's AMMACHI Labs and the Center for Women's Empowerment & Gender Equality in Kerala, India where I obtained my doctorate. Apart from regular teaching and student guidance, my responsibilities include social science research in sustainable development, grant writing, monitoring and evaluation tool development, programming support, and research publications. As a Research Center whose director holds the UNESCO Chair in Gender Equality, our overarching research goal is to develop a "Vulnerability Map" of a population that can holistically take account of a communities demographics, needs, resources/infrastructure, and social issues in order to produce the most salient solutions for policy and intervention.
I have been fortunate to work closely with the UN Democracy Fund office in NY, as well as the UNESCO and UNICEF offices in Delhi for our joint projects and in planning for future collaborations. These efforts help to align our programs with UN goals, ensuring collaboration and open sharing of best practices.
PhD RESEARCH Summary
The level of empowerment women gain in women empowerment (WE) programs depends in part on the support of their community—especially the men who are a part of their lives. A man’s reaction to WE programs and his response to the shift in power dynamics that accompanies women empowerment is a potential source of aid or conflict for WE projects. While there have been a handful of studies and metrics that examine men’s attitudes toward women, sexism, and the like, little of this has made it into empowerment work, despite the large body of evidence that instances of violence, conflict, or lack of project sustainability often follow WE projects because of male resistance. In light of this, it is important to study what the factors are (cultural, psychological, value, situational, etc.) that contribute to Indian men’s response to WE programs in rural India. I propose to study a subset of men who have a family member in an ongoing WE project to identify these factors, measure them, and provide a discussion of program strategies for improved and male-inclusive WE projects.
RESEARCH
RESEARCH
Since 2011, I have been working with AMMACHI Labs and the CWEGE as a project manager and researcher in women's empowerment projects in rural India. My duties include proposal writing, strategic field implementation and problem solving, mixed methods monitoring and evaluation, and research reporting and publication. This research work also requires significant field work, and I have had the opportunity to travel across India and live with and learn from communities from all walks of life. From 2015, my focus has been on empowering women as community organizers in local sanitation and water management. Part of this was training women to build and maintain their own toilets, and spread public health awareness. I used findings from this work to write policy briefs and other academic research. This includes formal empowerment frameworks that have guided other projects in gender-transformative sanitation and water management for rural populations.
In my personal research, I have evaluated existing empowerment indicators and frameworks, and the role of family and men's support in the empowerment process. We found that, more than others, socio-cultural factors are essential for project sustainability. In applying this to sanitation and water management, I evaluated national policies on toilet usage and improved community sanitation. Most recently, I was a lead author on a UNESCO India report on engaging men in gender equality, where a national roadmap was created to improve existing stakeholder efforts through systems thinking, multi- discipline collaboration, and grass-roots participatory methods.
Implementation Projects
2021-Present
CRPF India & Amrita University
In partnership with India’s Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Amrita has created a program that consists of workshops to bring resilience and help foster a broader acceptance of gender equality. In response to reports of a growing suicide rate in the military service, the Amrita Center for Women's Empowerment & Gender Equality developed a curricula, for both men and women, to address the overwhelming stress of working in a conflict zone, balancing family and professional obligations, and confronting masculinity and patriarchal norms that detract from healthy living.
The Gender Conversation Workshop addresses the issue of gender equality, masculinity, and mental health at the individual, household, and community levels. The ultimate purpose is to promote the wellbeing of the CRPF servicemen and women and improve their overall morale. This is a unique program that involves awareness building and training to encourage healthy dialogue on gender and mental health among the CRPF personnel and their families. It also seeks to promote them as positive role models at the community level.
2021-2022
UNESCO New Delhi & Amrita University
Over the last few decades, India has made considerable progress in supporting science education for girls at the school level, facilitating the access of Indian women to higher level science studies, and supporting them in their scientific careers. Yet, like in many other countries, Indian women still face many visible and invisible barriers and challenges in their personal lives and professional pathways.
In this publication, we have compiled a summary of what has already been achieved, outlined the known remaining obstacles, and made suggestions on how to further improve the situation. Our team has also produced new ideas and translated them into actionable recommendations for better retaining and promoting Indian women in science education and careers.
2020-2021
UNESCO New Delhi & Amrita University
The goal of this research is to explain, through multiple means and across different spheres, the need to engage and empower men and boys to critically evaluate national, regional and local norms of masculinities and challenge negative gender stereotypes and behaviors. The report also outlines how such a positive transformation will help stakeholders from the civil society, government, academia, and others, in addressing myths and misconceptions surrounding the different notions of masculinity, paving the way for societies to achieve peace and sustainable development, with gender equality as a core principle. This analysis and the resulting recommendations focused on India are expected to provide a valuable an important reference on this issue for the region and globally
Women's Empowerment: Community Sanitation through Democratic Participation
2017-2019
UNDEF & Amrita University
This was a two year, pan-India initiative that aimed to address the issues of inadequate community sanitation, women’s health, and water management in rural India through improving democratic representation of women in community leadership and local governance. The project targeted one village in 21 states in India, and sought to empower at least 5,000 women in rural Indian communities to champion sanitation and community development, eventually reaching their entire village, or 30,000 indirect beneficiaries. Participating women received continuous life skill training, conducted sanitation campaigns, and organized and mobilized efforts to implement key community actions to access government programs, such as the Swachh Bharat Mission, that specifically promotes sanitation. This community mobilization and training effort was designed to efficiently reach entire communities in a short amount of time. It also provided strength and support to the women advocating and petitioning to their local governments to address social and environmental issues in their villages. It was in line with the Government of India’s commitment to improving sanitation and rural development, as well as the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.
2014-2018
Amrita University & MA Math
WE:Sanitation empowered rural women in 21 villages across 21 states India to address poor sanitation and the exclusion of women from civic life. Leadership and facilitator training prepared select women in each village to mobilize one woman in every household (>4,000), promoting a community lead, Open Defecation Free (ODF) drive to promote sanitation in all 21 villages. They learned to build toilets, avail government schemes, conduct awareness campaigns, and monitor water quality.
The training provided to the women to build their own toilets was designed and implemented by Amrita University and is a technology-enhanced, community-based approach to skill development, known as Amrita computerized vocational education and training (Amrita cVET). The approach shows promise in addressing the struggle to end open defecation, raise sanitation awareness, as well as strengthen personal and community development among women living in rural India.
Phase I was launched in September, 2014 with a pilot deployment in a village in the state of Odisha. 20 women were trained to build a toilet using the Amrita cVET model, while researchers at AMMACHI Labs worked with the participants to improve and modify the project strategy to improve efficacy. Findings were translated into improved course materials and deployment practices.
Phase II started in 2016, and scaled Phase I efforts to 21 states throughout India. This phase focuses on researching the scalability, wider impact, and establishment of best practices for global knowledge transfer–on the topic of women’s empowerment and community-led total sanitation (CLTS). The inclusion of diverse income-generation programs was also studied, to see if greater economic empowerment would have greater sustainability. Community engagement through the establishment of SHGs, outreach programs, and inclusion into Government of India programs (especially Swachh Bharat Abhayan and Swajal) were also studied.
2012-2014
UNDEF & Amrita University
Over the course of two years, The WE Project empowered 3,000 women in the Indian states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, with an enhanced ability to participate in the democratic process and strengthened capacity to make decisions at the individual, family, and community levels. 18 centers were established and maintained throughout the duration of the project.
Economic empowerment was fostered through AMMACHI Labs’ computerized vocational education and training (cVET) programs and social-democratic empowerment through a Life Enrichment Education (LEE) tailored to the needs of the community.The aim of this blended approach was to ensure students received the technical knowledge required, as well as the confidence and support to take the learned skills forward.
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