Krishna Ahooja-Patel

Krishna Ahooja-Patel

Doctor of Letters

Dr. Dr. Krishna Ahooja - Patel holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from the University of Aligarh (U.P.), India, as well as a Ph.D. degree in International Relations from the University of Geneva. She is a Barrister-at-Law from the Inner Temple, London.

For several years, she worked as a lawyer and a journalist. Since 1969, when she joined the International Labour Office in Geneva, her areas of work have included employment, migration, labour law and general development questions. For the United Nations Decade of Women (1975-1986), she was assigned to the ILO Office for Women Workers' Questions, where she was the editor of the news bulletin Women at Work. From 1986-1989, she was the Deputy Chief of Research and Training and Deputy Director at the United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW), Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

In January 1990, she was appointed to the Nancy Rowell Jackman Chair in Women's Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Since 1992, she has been a member of faculty of the International Studies Program of St. Mary's University offering two courses on United Nations and Development, and Gender and Development.

Throughout the decade of the 1990's, Dr. Krishna Ahooja - Patel has also been an activist in the feminist and peace movements. She was the President of the Women's World Summit Foundation (Geneva) from 1994 to 1997, where she also edited their global newsletter called Seventy-Five Percent. She is a Director of the Institute on Equality and Development, Gujarat Vidhapith (University of Knowledge), Ahmedabad, India. She is currently the President of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), an International non-governmental organization, where she was elected by consensus in August 2001.