Charyl Kong’s research on women’s political empowerment in Brazil wins the 2026 Explore Econ Stone Centre Prize
Each year, undergraduate students at UCL present their independent research projects at Explore Econ, the department’s annual showcase.
The Stone Centre Prize is awarded to the project that best engages with the Centre’s focus on inequality. This year’s winner is Charyl Kong, for her dissertation on Brazil’s conditional cash transfer programme and its effect on women’s political empowerment. We caught up with Charyl shortly after she returned home to China to hear about the work and what comes next.
Hi Charyl, congratulations. Could you start by telling us a little about your background and how you got to this point?
I’m Charyl, I’m from China, and this is my final year at UCL, where I’m majoring in economics. Before this year I spent a year on exchange in the US, at Dartmouth College, where I learned a lot about Latin America. UCL hasn’t talked a lot about Latin America in the economics department, so I thought it would be interesting to study the economics of the region. For my dissertation, I worked on Brazil and the conditional cash transfer programme there. That was what I submitted to Explore Econ.
The starting point was a small research project I’d been doing at Dartmouth on Brazil’s conditional cash transfer programme. As I dug into the literature, I noticed that the political-economy side of the programme hadn’t really been studied, especially by economists. So I decided to focus there.
Could you explain what the conditional cash transfer programme is?
It’s probably the biggest poverty-focused policy in Latin America. The basic idea is that the state government gives money directly to poor citizens. But some governments realised that the policy is more effective when the cash is handed to women, because women tend to direct the money towards things like better food expenditure and improved nutrition for their children. There are also unexpected effects: women’s decision-making within the household increases, and so does their autonomy. So the effects aren’t just about poverty relief, they’re also reshaping household dynamics.
Why this topic in particular?
I’ve been interested in political economy for a while, so the political-economy angle of the cash transfer programme was a natural fit. Women’s political empowerment is an important issue to consider, for obvious reasons. And I’ve been interested in Latin America since Dartmouth, Brazil is a very large country in the region, so there were a lot of reasons to be drawn to this.
What did you find?
I used data from Brazil’s local municipal elections, looking specifically at women’s political empowerment. The gender gap in political empowerment is large. My research asked whether designing the cash transfer to go to women rather than to men could narrow that gap. The result I came to was that the programme had a real effect on women’s empowerment, but a limited one. Women are more likely to run for elections. But the impact stops there. The elections themselves don’t see a reduction in inequality, because the women who run aren’t winning. The policy moves women closer to political participation, but stops short of representation.
What does it mean to you to win the Stone Centre Prize?
I’m quite motivated after winning it. I didn’t really expect to. Watching the other presentations, I felt that other people’s projects were more ambitious than mine. But the Stone Centre Prize, which focuses specifically on inequality, came to me, and it gave me a real boost.
The prize has motivated me to keep working in this field, particularly on gender inequality. Once I’m properly trained as an economist, after the Master’s and the PhD, I would really like to return and work with the Stone Centre.
What’s next for you?
In two weeks I’m going to Hong Kong for a summer research programme funded by Hong Kong University. I’ve been assigned to a mentor whose work is mostly on AI, and I’m hoping to use the programme to link AI to questions of inequality. After that, I’m starting a Master’s at Duke in mid-August, and eventually I want to do a PhD.
Charyl, congratulations again, and thanks so much for talking to us. We look forward to following your work in future.
For further reading about the relationship between AI and inequality see our interview with Tamo Halder, who is developing an AI tool to increase inclusivity in economics education. See also our three key takeaways from the Stone Centre and INSEAD Workshop on AI and inequality.
For more on Explore Econ, including this year’s full programme of projects, see the UCL Explore Econ 2026 page.
