Ms. Carolyn Hannan was appointed as Director of the Division for the Advancement of Women from 1 December, 2001. Ms Hannan is a Swedish National. She was formerly the Senior Policy Advisor on Gender Equality in the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (1992-1998) and the Chair of the OECD/DAC Working Party on Gender Equality (1995-1997). During the 1990s Ms Hannan was also part of a national gender mainstreaming advisory group in Sweden. More recently, Ms Hannan worked for two years as the Principal Officer for Gender Mainstreaming in the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues at the United Nations in New York. In this context she provided advice and support and monitored progress in gender mainstreaming throughout the United Nations.

Ms Hannan has also lived and worked for more than 10 years in Africa, and within the context of her work with Swedish development cooperation, has worked on gender and development in many other countries in Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. Her academic background is in social and economic geography and social anthropology. She has a doctorate in Social and Economic Geography from the University of Lund in Sweden and has the title of Associate Professor.