Every year, March is informally dedicated to recognizing the progress of women’s rights and celebrating their achievements for a month known as Women’s Empowerment Month.

To celebrate, The All State is recognizing powerful and impactful women in the Austin Peay State University community, starting with Elaine Tontoh.

Tontoh, an Austin Peay State University professor, expanded her impact in economic education this year when she was recognized for her research on the “Triple Day Thesis,” a theoretical framework that breaks down the challenges mothers face in the workplace.

In January, Tontoh attended the American Economic Association’s (AEA) annual meeting in San Francisco, California, where she was awarded the $2,000 2024 Professional Development Grant for Underrepresented Minorities. The award was given by AEA and Pearson Education, creating the potential for her work to be featured in Pearson’s textbooks and online resources.

The foundation of her research came to her when she started to juggle becoming a full-time mother while also going to school and working. With this struggle, she realized that there was simply not enough time in the day.

“That realization was not necessarily negative, but I kept asking: Why should I have to give up my PhD dreams to be a mother? Why is there no economic framework that acknowledges and addresses this time dilemma?” said Tontoh.

It was with this realization that she knew she wanted to give a voice to those with similar experiences and create an economic framework to represent this reality for so many women.

“If I was facing this challenge, I knew that countless other women were experiencing the same struggle,” said Tontoh.

With this, Tontoh’s thesis highlights time as a scarce resource that inhibits most mothers’ freedom to truly accomplish certain dreams.

Offering advice to students who want to make a difference in their community, she encourages them to always be curiously aware of their surroundings.

“Pay attention to the struggles and challenges around you because they often hold the key to impactful research and innovation. For me, that mission is to advocate for women and mothers while shaping the field of economics to better reflect their realities.”

Tontoh hopes to continue her impact with her research, planning to further develop her Triple Day Theory into an alternative framework that analyzes maternal labor supply and gender disparities in workforce participation.