India, Sept. 10 -- Economists are trained to keep personal experience separate from analysis. But the questions we choose to study often reflect what we have seen in our own lives. Lekha Chakraborty's chapter shows how personal experience led her to an important question, and how careful research helped move it from the margins of public finance toward the mainstream.

Her chapter intertwines two stories. She describes growing up in Kerala after her father sent her mother a divorce notice by inland letter late in her second pregnancy. Her mother, a Government hospital nurse, continued working and raised two children alone. The second story concerns gender budgeting in India, a field Professor Chakraborty entered in 2000. Early meetings of...