2025 Harriet B. Presser Award Recipient

Congratulations Sonalde Desai

Congratulations to Dr. Sonalde Desai, University of Maryland, as the 2025 recipient of the Harriet B. Presser Award. The Presser award honors a record of sustained research contributions to the study of gender and demography and consists of a plaque and a cash prize. 

Dr. Sonalde Desai received the 2025 Harriet B. Presser Award for her long and productive career, researching gender and demography. Focusing primarily on India, she has shed light on women’s empowerment, education, and employment. She led the development of the India Human Development Survey, and since its launch 2024, it has become an important resource for the global research community. Dr. Desai has played a pivotal role in bridging research policy and public discourse.

Dr. Sonalde Desai's Statement

I am grateful to have this award because it gives me an opportunity to remind all of us of what feminist demographers have contributed to our discipline, particularly at this time of turmoil.

Harriet Presser was both a mentor and a friend during my years at Maryland. Harriet established the one and only center on Population, gender and social inequality. I once asked her what drove her to it. She said as a single mother raising a child on graduate stipend was enough to make her realize how gender, poverty, social inequality all combined to shape people's lives. But regardless of her passion and convictions, she was also a true believer in power of evidence and methods of demography. All of which we are going to need as our discipline grapples with the changing world around us.

Most importantly for me she also represented a generation that came of age during a time of turmoil and the rising tide of sisterhood. I envied her the fellowship and community to which she belonged, one that consisted of stalwarts of our field, some of whom we lost in recent years. Susan Watkins, Karen Mason, Ruth Dixon Mueller, Adrienne Germaine, Barbara Seaman.. a spectrum of researchers and reproductive rights activists. We need such community today as never before.

PAA is just the organization to allow us to build and nurture it such community. Thank you for allowing me to honor Harriet's memory.

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