Tinker, Irene, 1927-

Irene Tinker (born March 8, 1927, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) is Professor Emerita in the Departments of City and Regional Planning & Women's Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, teaching from 1989–1998. She was the founding Board president of the International Center for Research on Women, founder and director of the Equity Policy Center and co-founder of the Wellesley Center for Research on Women.

Tinker received her B.A. from Radcliff College in political philosophy and comparative government and her PhD. from the London School of Economics and Political Science in comparative government and development. She married Millidge Walker in 1952, with whom she had three children. Irene Tinker became a leading academic and activist in field of women in international development specifically the gender impact of development. She served on the faculties of the University of Maryland, Howard University, American University, and University of California-Berkeley, where she spent the majority of her teaching years. She taught courses covering women studies, city and regional planning and development, among other topics. Tinker was a Fulbright Scholar in Nepal and Sri Lanka (1987-1989) and a fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center in Italy (March-April 1994).

Recent Tinker publications focus on economic and political empowerment for women: “Alleviating Poverty: Investing in Women’s Work,” in the Journal of the American Planning Association; “Quotas for Women in Elected Legislatures: Do They Really Empower Women?”; “Many Paths to Power: Women in Contemporary Asia”; and “Utilizing Interdisciplinarity to Analyze Global Socio-Economic Change: A Tribute to Ester Boserup.” Her chapter “Empowerment Just Happened: The Unexpected Expansion of Women's Organizations” appears in Women and Gender Equity in Development Theory and Practice, a volume dedicated to her “in recognition of her role as key intellectual provocateur in the field of women/gender and development.”