She and her husband, political scientist Timothy M. Shaw, are jointly adjunct research fellows of the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security and Global Governance at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
[7][15] Parpart served as a visiting professor and the graduate coordinator in the Institute for Gender and Development Studies at the University of the West Indies, Saint Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago from 2007 to 2011.
[15] Parpart and her husband, political scientist Timothy M. Shaw became adjunct research fellows of the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security and Global Governance at the University of Massachusetts Boston in 2012.
Political scientist Meredeth Turshen said that Parpart concluded that controlling women's sexual behavior and freedoms facilitated the functioning of indirect rule.
Parpart and other scholars pointed out that women rarely appeared in colonial records unless it was to address a moral panic such as prostitution or polygyny, or as code for problems related to rights or generational relationships.
[22] Looking at other power structures, Parpart argued, as had other feminist authors such as Maria Mies, that the capitalist system relied on exploiting women's domestic labor as free, thereby minimizing its value.
[24] She proposed that policies of gender equity did not require that men and women (or boys and girls) be treated in the exact same manner, but instead that their differing needs, aspirations, and behaviors be equally valued and given support and access to take advantage of opportunities and participate in decision-making.
[25] Scholars Ann-Dorte Christensen and Sune Qvotrup Jensen stated that Parpart examined the ramifications of being excluded from decision-making and having limited paths for economic security and concluded that poverty and lack of opportunities have led young men to participate in terrorist actions.