Maria S. Floro is Professor of Economics at American University in Washington DC and co-director of the Graduate Program on Gender Analysis in Economics (PGAE). Her publications include books on Informal Credit Markets and the New Institutional Economics, Women's Work in the World Economy, and Gender, Development, and Globalization: Economics as if All People Mattered (co-authored; forthcoming)as well as monographs and journal articles on vulnerability, informal employment, urban food security, time use and well-being, financial crises, urban poverty, households savings, credit and asset ownership. She has collaborated with researchers, women’s groups and community organizations in Thailand, Philippines, Ecuador and Bolivia in conducting fieldwork on vulnerability, gender and informal employment in urban poor communities. She is currently working on analysis of time use survey data of China, Mongolia and Thailand and serves as technical adviser to the Economic and Social Costs of Violence Against Women Project.