Dr. Rachel Rinaldo is conducting a research project on women and work during and after the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia as a 2022-2023 Fulbright US Scholar. Her research period is from October 2022 through early August 2023. She was previously a Fulbright-Hays awardee in 2002-2003 for her dissertation research on women’s activism.

Based in Yogyakarta, Dr. Rinaldo is collaborating with sociology faculty member Dr. Fina Itriyati at Gadjah Mada University for this research. They seek to understand the experiences and challenges of women working in diverse economic sectors ranging from the informal economy to agriculture, overseas migrant workers, and women in professional occupations, as well as to explore how work has changed for women during the pandemic. They will also examine how women’s religious beliefs shape their decisions about paid and unpaid work. The findings from this research will help social scientists to better understand the consequences of the pandemic on women’s work and careers, particularly in majority Muslim contexts. The research will also shed light on how current shifts in the nature of work, including the rise of remote work, social media apps, and increasingly blurred boundaries between work and family, affect women.

Dr. Rinaldo is an associate professor of sociology and faculty director of the Center for Asian Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. Dr. Rinaldo’s research interests include gender, globalization, social change, religion, and qualitative methods. Her first book, Mobilizing Piety: Islam and Feminism in Indonesia (Oxford 2013), was a pathbreaking study of how Indonesian activists creatively combine Islam and feminism. Her recent research has also included a study of divorce in Java and the contemporary art scene in Yogyakarta.