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Linda Scott

Emeritus Professor


  • Linda.Scott@sbs.ox.ac.uk

Saïd Business School
University of Oxford
Park End Street
Oxford
OX1 1HP

Profile

Linda is best known for her creation of the concept of the Double X Economy. She is a founder of Power Shift, the Oxford Forum for Women in the World Economy.

The Double X Economy is a perspective that describes the global economy of women in both the developed and developing world, and the roles of women not only as consumers, but as investors, donors and workers. Linda writes a blog called The Double X Economy, as well as blogging for the World Economic Forum, Forbes, and Bloomberg Businessweek on gender issues.

Professor Scott was selected as one of the Top 25 Global Thinkers by Prospect magazine in both 2014 and 2015. The Double X Economy concept was featured by a special Financial Times video series called, “Thinking Big” in January 2014. Linda was also a finalist for the Thinkers 50 “Breakthrough Thinker” award for this same work in 2012. Many other world press vehicles, from The Economist to BBC, have covered Linda's research.

Linda is founder of Power Shift, the Oxford Forum for Women in the World Economy. This select forum brings together 200 leaders from across sectors to think and build partnerships around empowering women economically. She curates the programme each year.  In 2015, the theme was Women and Markets.  In 2014, the theme was Women and Finance and in 2013, the theme was Women and Entrepreneurship.

Linda is on the External Advisory Council to the Walmart Women’s Economic Empowerment Initiative. She is also a Senior Fellow of the MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth.  Linda also serves on the Access to Markets subcommittee of the International Business Women's Leadership Council. She led a global initiative to put women’s financial inclusion on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals—the #DoubleXPetition.

Linda is invited to speak at many different venues and to many groups. In 2014 and 2015, she spoke at the World Bank and the United Nations.  She was a keynote speaker at the global conference of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts in July 2014. 

Linda and her colleagues at Oxford are engaged in a range of projects, including:

  • Selecting and testing a set of psychometrics to assess and monitor “women’s economic empowerment,” under an academic grant from the ExxonMobil Foundation.
  • Designing a measurement system for the Walmart Empowering Women Together system, which works to give small women-owned businesses around the world access to their giant consumer market.
  • Bringing together a consortium of multinationals to share learning and data about their women’s economic empowerment projects.
  • Writing a report to frame the Vodafone Connected Women programme.
  • Assessing the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women's online mentoring programme.
  • Examining how providing sanitary pads to poor girls in Africa helps them remain in school, increasing their life chances and positively impacting the society, economy and environment in these poor nations.
  • Exploring how Procter & Gamble’s Pampers brand and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) formed a partnership to deliver life changing health programmes to some of the world’s poorest countries, whilst also achieving corporate goals.
  • Looking at how distribution systems like Avon and CARE’s Rural sales Program in Bangladesh help thousands of impoverished women achieve financial security through the delivery of important goods, such as clothes and soap, to rural communities.

Linda and her colleagues have developed a series of cases exploring the limitations that gender sets on women’s engagement in the world economy, including their access to capital and their participation in world markets. 

In addition to her extensive work around women’s entrepreneurship, Linda is a leader in advertising research, particularly as it relates to consumer response to imagery and music. For her work in this area, she was recently nominated for the Paul Converse Award for long-term contribution to marketing scholarship. Linda remains active in the arena of advertising research, as Editor of Advertising and Society Review, a board member of the Advertising Educational Foundation and board member of the Consumer Culture Theory organisation. She published a path-breaking article on consumer response to imagery in the Journal of Consumer Research in 2007 and has further work on this topic in review.

Prior to joining Saïd Business School in 2006, Linda held appointments in advertising, art, women's studies and communications at the University of Illinois. Her education includes bachelors and master's degrees in American literature and history, an MBA and a doctorate in mass communications.

Read Linda's CV.

Research

Linda's current research focuses on women and entrepreneurship.

In particular, she is exploring the potential for market-based approaches to provide economic empowerment and entrepreneurial opportunities for poor women in developing nations. She also conducts research related to consumer responses to imagery and music in advertising and the relationship between religion and commerce.

View Linda's research.

Engagement

Linda has worked extensively around the world.

In her research, Linda has engaged with thousands of women and girls, as well as government officials, corporate managers, educators, shopkeepers and public health nurses, to help improve the living conditions for women in developing countries. She has worked with Procter & Gamble, Avon, CARE International, UNICEF and many local NGOs and companies on the implementation of programmes that assist women and children in some of the world’s poorest regions.  Through this extensive work, Linda has established herself as a leading expert on women’s entrepreneurship and empowerment in emerging markets.

Linda was recently appointed to the U.S. Department of State’s International Council on Women’s Business Leadership (ICWBL) Subcommittee on Access to Markets. As a member of this Subcommittee, she will support the development of projects and policies that will empower women with the tools and resources necessary to thrive in an increasingly competitive global economy.

She is on the board of the Advertising Educational Foundation in New York and is the editor of Advertising & Society Review. She is also on the advisory boards for G23, Omnicom Group’s women’s consultancy, the Organization for Women in International Trade, the Internationalist’s Awards for Innovation in Media and the Saïd Foundation’s Inspiring Women in Leadership & Learning (iwill) initiative.

Linda is a frequent speaker at industry conferences, universities and events. She has recently discussed her work at the 2011 Interbrand Conference on the ‘New Age of Corporate Citizenship’ at Harvard University, a Procter & Gamble dinner for the Clinton Global Initiative, the American Marketing Association Summer Educators’ Conference and the Global Forum on Women’s Entrepreneurship at Zhejiang University, among others.

Linda’s Double X Economy research was recognised by Thinkers 50, which shortlisted her for its annual Breakthrough Thinker award. In addition, Linda was nominated for the Paul D. Converse Award for long-term contribution to scholarship in marketing for her work around consumer response to advertisements.

Linda is an active member of the Association for Consumer Research. In addition to having chaired the main ACR conference (ACR Montreal 1998), she has chaired the ACR Gender Conference and will chair the Consumer Culture Theory Conference in Oxford in August 2012.

Teaching

Linda’s MBA teaching focuses on the role of culture in the management of global markets for consumer goods, as well as branding and communication.

In those classes, she uses an eclectic mix of examples, illustrated with images and music, and brings in industry experts to share their experiences. In addition to her courses for the MBA programme, Linda taught on the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women Entrepreneurship Certificate Programme. This programme, launched in Hangzhou, Eastern China in 2009, provided 100 underserved high-potential female entrepreneurs with business and management education at Zhejiang University. Linda has developed two teaching cases for the programme.

Linda teaches:

  • Culture and Global Markets (MBA)
  • Branding and Communications (MBA)
  • Islamic Branding (Executive Education)
  • The Women’s Economy (Doctoral level)
  • Interpretation of Markets (Doctoral level)

Social media

Follow Linda on social media.

Check out Linda's blog.