Linda Scott

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.