Mary Alice Rosero is the Social Development Specialist (Gender and Development) of the Central and West Asia Department (CWRD). Before becoming a staff, Alice was the Gender and Social Development consultant tasked with mainstreaming gender in ADB-funded projects in Armenia, the Kyrgyz Republic, Pakistan, and Tajikistan, as well as in the developing member countries of the South Asia Department.
In a career spanning more than two decades, Alice has been mainstreaming gender in different development contexts – government, academe, and NGO. Prior to joining ADB, she headed the policy division of the Philippine Commission on Women, which facilitated the passage of laws against gender-based violence (such as the anti-trafficking and anti-violence against women laws) as well as the comprehensive Magna Carta of Women. She also did a gender audit of UNDP programs in the country. In the academe, she led the establishment of the gender mainstreaming program in the Philippines’ second biggest state university. Her NGO work consisted of doing research and producing advocacy materials on the situation of workers in various sectors, including contractual labor.
Alice has published technical papers on gender, such as “Gender in Resettlement: Case Studies from Kolkata and Rajasthan Urban Development Projects, India” (ADB, Gender and Urban Poverty in South Asia), and “The Household as a Workplace: The Articulation of Class and Gender in Middle Class Households” (Review of Women’s Studies), and books such as Filipino Migrant Women in The Netherlands (Giraffe Books) and Human Capital: How Cheap Can We Get? (Labor Rights and Democracy, Inc.), as well as presented papers such as “Sex and Gender in Nationalist Discourse and Its Implication on the Women’s Movement in the Philippines” (10th International Conference, Women’s Studies Network (UK) Association, University of London).
Alice has a Master of Arts degree on Women and Development (“With Recognition”) from the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands, and a Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from the University of the Philippines.