The Clayman Institute for Gender Research

Veena Dubal earned her graduate degrees from the University of California at Berkeley; a JD from Boalt Hall and a PhD in Jurisprudence and Social Policy from the Sociology Department in 2014.  She earned her undergraduate degree in International Relations with a minor in Feminist Studies from Stanford University where she first began to develop her voice and focus her research goals on gender equality and social justice.

Veena’s research analyzes how nonunionized immigrant workers deploy dominant masculinities narratives to make sense of and negotiate their lack of job security, creating gendered hierarchies that work to exclude women and preclude protected collective bargaining under the law. Based on this research, she discusses ways that public interest lawyers can “change the narrative” to reshape the workplace dynamics that create these dominant masculinities narratives and that undermine the possibility of a collectively-driven, equalized workforce. She writes on the relationship between law and social change, and her dissertation is on taxi workers, legal employment identities, and movement building.

She used her time at the Institute to turn her dissertation manuscript into a book and work on a new project focused on the gender politics of the new "ride-sharing" phenomenon.

In the summer of 2015, Veena joins UC Hastings as an Associate Professor, where she will continue her research and scholarship on how new technologies of work in the "sharing economy" impact the lived experiences of workers and how legal interventions can address the rise of precarious labor.