Sylvia Chant


Sylvia Hamilton Chant was a British academic who was professor of Development Geography at the London School of Economics and Political Science and was co-director of the MSc Urbanisation and Development Programme in the LSE's Department of Geography and Environment.

Background

Chant was born in 1958 in Dundee. Her parents were June Dollis Mary and Stuart Ralston Chant, virologist and plant pathologist. She left Scotland when she was a baby. She earned her BA at King's College, Cambridge and then her PhD at University College London in 1984. Chant was a so that her father could research and lecture. She said that pride in her father's work with tropical agriculture, including the cassava mosaic virus influenced her career choice. She took Geography at the University of Liverpool from 1987 to 1988, before joining the LSE. She died after a battle with cancer in 2019.

Contributions

She read the works of Betty Friedan, Angela Carter and Marilyn French and realised the bias that was present in academia. Her doctorate and first paper looked at how women were involved with self-help housing in Querétaro in Mexico.
Gender and development research were her interests and in particular the 'feminisation of poverty', livelihoods and employment in urban areas. Working in Costa Rica, Mexico, the Philippines and The Gambia. In the Gambia she has also worked on resistance to female genital mutilation.
She was the editor of The International Handbook of Gender and Poverty : Concepts, Research, Policy,

Awards

  • Fellow, Royal Society of Arts
  • Fellow of the Academy of Social Science
  • Leverhulme major research fellowship
  • Adlbertska Guest Professor of Sustainable Development, University of Gothenburg

    Publications

  • Cities, Slums and Gender in the Global South: Towards a Feminised Urban Future
  • The International Handbook of Gender and Poverty: Concepts, Research, Policy.
  • Geographies of Development in the 21st Century
  • Gender, Generation and Poverty: Exploring the 'Feminisation of Poverty' in Africa, Asia and Latin America
  • Gender in Latin America
  • Genero en Latinoamerica in Latin America
  • Mainstreaming Men in Gender and Development
  • Three Generations, Two Genders, One World
  • Women-headed Households: Diversity and Dynamics in the Developing World
  • Women of a Lesser Cost: Female Labour, Foreign Exchange and Philippine Development
  • Gender and Migration in Developing Countries
  • Routledge Major Works on Gender, Poverty and Development
  • Women and Survival in Mexican Cities
  • Women in the Third World: Gender Issues in Rural and Urban Areas
  • Community leadership and self-help housing
  • ''Gender, Urban Development and Housing''