Dr. Dileni Gunewardena is Chair Professor of Economics at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, and a Non-Resident Fellow at Verité Research. She holds a PhD in Economics from American University, Washington, DC, where she later returned as Adjunct Professor and Visiting Scholar in the Program on Gender Analysis in Economics (PGAE) in 2017–2018. Her research spans gender and labour economics, human capital, poverty and inequality, and the care economy. She is a Fulbright Research Scholar, a Brookings Institution Echidna Global Scholar, and a two-time Global Development Network research awardee.
Dileni has had a longstanding role in the Partnership for Economic Policy (PEP) as a researcher, Research Fellow, scientific mentor and trainer in gender analysis. Her association with PEP began with research on gender wage gaps in Sri Lanka; since 2008 she has served as a scientific mentor in microeconomic and gender analysis, and since 2020, as a PEP Research Fellow. She has developed training materials and led workshops on integrating gender into economic research, and co-developed and teaches PEP’s graduate microprogram course, Gender Analysis in Economic Policy Research, now offered through its partnership with the University of Florence (UniFi). She also led the development of this 17-module GEI course, coordinating nine experts from four continents.
Dileni was the founding coordinator of the University of Peradeniya’s Master of Development Practice (MDP) programme, established as part of the global MDP network with support from the MacArthur Foundation and Columbia University’s Earth Institute.
Her recent research focuses on female labour-force participation, gender pay gaps and the care economy in Sri Lanka. She is co-author, with Elizabeth King, of Human Capital and Gender Inequality in Middle-Income Countries (Routledge). As Sri Lanka lead for the international Care Economies in Context initiative, she has led research on mapping the care economy and estimating the economic contribution of care work. Her recent policy research includes authoring the Asian Development Bank report Exploring the Factors Behind Low Female Labor Force Participation in Sri Lanka and leading the Verité Research team that authored the ILO’s 2024 report The Gender Pay Gap in Sri Lanka: A Statistical Review with Policy Implications.