Two Decades of Gender Role Attitudes in Europe

Over the last two decades, we’ve seen a remarkable shift in attitudes towards women in the workforce—but when it comes to work and family, how much have our gender roles really changed?

This week’s WAPPP seminar featured an investigation of changing gender role attitudes in 17 European countries from 1990-2010. Professor Mary Brinton, Reischauer Institute Professor and Department Chair of Sociology at Harvard University, discussed her work with graduate student Carly Knight on the rise of gender egalitarian attitudes.

The inspiration for this project comes from the “stalled gender role revolution” beginning in the early 1990’s. The pace of change has stagnated in a number of areas, including closing the wage gap, decreasing occupational sex segregation, and changing household gender roles. Professor Brinton finds that beliefs about male superiority have decreased drastically over time, but may have been supplanted by gender essentialist notions of what is “normal” for men and women that have slowed changes in gender roles. Gender essentialism is not necessarily opposed to egalitarianism: it is possible to consider men and women equal but different in significant ways. Critically, Professor Brinton notes, gender role attitudes seem to be multidimensional: we should not expect a straight-line continuum from traditional to egalitarian attitudes. Instead, there may be many different “egalitarianisms” that have different levels of essentialism and respect for individual choices. This research project is intended to parse the different dimensions of gender role attitudes.

The key questions in this research are whether traditional (male breadwinner) gender role attitudes are declining everywhere in the postindustrial world, and if so, what is replacing them? To test these questions, Professor Brinton studied responses to the World Values Survey and European Values Survey from 17 European countries from 1990-2010. In particular, she focused on the items in the survey that had to do with men’s and women’s roles in the labor market and in the family. Specifically, she used data from respondents asked to rate their agreement or disagreement with the following seven statements:

1. A working woman needs to have children in order to be fulfilled
2. A working mother can establish just as warm and secure a relationship with her children as a mother who doesn’t work.
3. Being a housewife is just as fulfilling as working for pay.
4. Both husband and wife should contribute to household income.
5. A job is all right, but what most women want is a home and children.
6. Having a job is the best way for a woman to be an independent person.
7. When jobs are scarce, a man should have more right to a job than a woman.

Using latent class analysis, Professor Brinton grouped individuals into clusters based on their attitudes toward these seven statements. The results yielded four gender role attitude “classes.”

The first, traditionalism, is just what we would expect in terms of male and female roles in the labor market and family. Traditionalists comprise 23% of the overall sample.

The second, work egalitarian, is most closely associated with thinking that men and women should both work. Work egalitarians strongly disagree that men have more right to a job than a woman in tough times and agree that working mothers can establish just a strong a relationship with their children as stay-at-home mothers. Work egalitarians make up 29% of the total sample.

The third category, dual-responsibility egalitarian, comprises 30% of the total sample. Dual-responsibility egalitarians think that women should work, but also demonstrate a great deal of gender essentialism when it comes to women’s roles in the family. This group strongly agrees that women should work, but also feel that women need a family and children. Dual-responsibility egalitarians place significant emphasis on what women should do based on their identity as women.

By contrast, the fourth group, flexible egalitarian, believes that women have choices and that all choices are valid. Only 18% of the total sample falls into this group, which is characterized by the beliefs that working mothers can establish strong relationships with their children and that being a housewife can be just as fulfilling as paid labor.

Having identified these four categories, Professor Brinton set out to track the change in prevalence of each attitude class over time. The prevalence of traditional gender role attitudes has dropped precipitously: 40% of the 1990 sample espoused traditional views, down to 10% in 2010. Work egalitarian and dual-responsibility egalitarian attitudes have increased the most over this period: flexible egalitarian attitudes remain somewhat rare.

Professor Brinton compared a few individual countries’ paths of change within the sample. In Hungary and Poland, dual-responsibility egalitarianism has generally replaced traditionalism. By contrast, in Germany, Spain, and Denmark, work egalitarianism is most prominent. Other than the decrease in traditionalism, there hasn’t been a significant convergence toward any particular egalitarianism in the 17 countries in the sample.

This work opens up the opportunity for much more research: this analysis descriptively defines the types and changes in attitudes, but doesn’t tell us much about who holds these views. For example, flexible egalitarianism may be constrained by social class, as only certain women can afford to have choices. Further, the surveys have only just begun to add items about expectations for men’s roles. We look forward to more work on changing gender role attitudes in the future!

The Contingent Power of Women in African Armed Groups

This week’s WAPPP seminar, “Rebel Queens and Black Diamonds: Gender Politics in African Armed Groups,” was named after two female rebel fighters, Rebel Queen of Sierra Leone and Black Diamond of Liberia. In the seminar, WAPPP fellow Zoe Marks discussed the research on gender politics within rebel groups that led her to these women, primarily with Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front (RUF).

Through her field work in Sierra Leone, which experienced a brutal civil war from 1991-2002, Marks found that 17% of women reported experiencing sexual assault in their lifetime, which she argues is likely an underestimate. However, Marks discussed how these statistics have created a paradigm in which women are victims and men are perpetrators that has led to the dominant discourse over sexual and gender-based violence. While sexual violence in Sierra Leone varied over time, it was less common than other forms of abuse, and women also participated in the violence.

Women and girls make up 10-30% of non-state armed groups worldwide, which is a much higher rate than in state militaries. Marks hypothesizes that this is due to the fact that rebel groups use broad based recruitment because they need all the people they can get. In addition to serving as soldiers and spies, women carry supplies and work on base producing and cooking food. They are also the wives and girlfriends of the male fighters, though a significant number of the relationships are forced and oftentimes violent, as was the case with the RUF.

To try to better understand the social-organizational context for women in rebel groups, Marks looked into the sources of female power in the RUF. She found that power largely existed on the individual level, not in groups or networks of women. As is traditional in Sierra Leonean culture, age and marital status contributed significantly to a woman's status in the group. Martial status, i.e. whether a woman was trained in warfare and had weapons herself, could also elevate her position. Marks argued that though some women were able to obtain military dominance, this rarely translated into political power once the conflict has ended. Instead, it was largely the commanders’ wives who were invited to peace talks.

She added that gender relations within rebel groups varies greatly, ranging from the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front, with its progressive stance on gender equality, to the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda. Made famous in 2012 by Joseph Kony, LRA uses marriage as a reward for commanders and to clamp down on immoral behavior, with the understanding that civilian rape hurts the public image and mission of the group.

Marks closed by citing research from Hudson et al, which listed the micro-aggressions of global gender inequality as (1) lack of bodily integrity and physical security, (2) lack of equity in family law, and (3) lack of parity in decision-making. Marks argues that these issues aren't actually that micro; they all help explain women’s experiences in war and gender politics in rebel groups, both in western Africa and worldwide.

How ‘No’ Can Get Women to the Top

For the past decade and a half, scholars have examined why American women are in very few corporate managerial positions compared to their male counterparts, despite representing 30% of elite MBA programs. The disparity is usually explained in several ways: (1) women have different job preferences, (2) women and men have performance differences when it comes to managerial tasks (i.e. women aren’t as good at these jobs), and (3) women face discrimination in the workplace, which prevents them from getting to the top. Recently, however, some researchers have begun to explain the problem with a bit more nuance.

Lise Vesterlund, an Economics Professor at the University of Pittsburgh, discussed an alternative theory based on research she conducted with coauthors Linda Babcock and Laurie Weingart, both professors at Carnegie Mellon University. In this week’s seminar, Breaking the Glass Ceiling with “No”: Gender Differences in Declining Requests for Non-Promotable Tasks, Professor Vesterlund looked at the assignment of undesirable tasks to better understand the issue.

She based her research on the premise that employees who accept more non-promotable tasks are promoted less often. A survey she conducted among MBA students indicated that women were more likely than men to accept such tasks, largely due to fear of the professional consequences of saying "no." As an economics professor, Vesterlund wanted to look at both the potential demand and supply side causes of this gap. The demand side is whether women are asked to perform non-promotable tasks more often than men, while the supply side is women’s response to such requests.

In a study involving freshmen and sophomores at Carnegie Mellon, Vesterlund et al placed students in random, anonymous groups of three, where they were tasked with hitting a button to make an “investment” that benefitted every member of the group, but gave the least to the individual who actually hit the button. This action represented a non-promotable, undesirable task in a corporate setting that needed to be completed despite no one wanting to do it. In a second part of the study, students had to ask another member of their group to hit the button for them.

The results revealed that both the demand and supply sides of this issue were to blame. While the vast majority of students pressed the button in the last possible seconds of each round – revealing that they were likely motivated by desperate self-interest and not altruism – women pressed the button significantly more often than men. In the second part of the study, Vesterlund also found that both men and women were more likely to ask a woman in their group to hit the button. In response to this, female participants complied 75% of the times that they were asked, while male participants’ decisions were split 50/50.

Vesterlund argued that since beliefs about women’s propensity to accept non-promotable tasks are central to this problem, women saying “no” more often might actually make a significant difference. She also suggested that some simple institutional changes, such as random assignment to event planning, committees, and other undesirable tasks, could allow women to take on more promotable assignments.

The Work-Family Narrative and How It's Hurting Women

Gender inequality in the higher echelons of the corporate world has made the news a lot lately – from the UK to Nigeria to Ireland, but the discussion at this week’s WAPPP seminar, "The Work-Family Narrative as a Social Defense: Explaining the Persistence of Gender Inequality in Organizations," focused on the discrepancy in American professional service firms. Despite large gains at the associate level of such organizations, where female employees now comprise roughly half of the workforce, women are severely underrepresented in elite positions. According to the 2013 Catalyst Census, only 15% of C-Suite executives in Fortune 500 companies are women.

Robin Ely, a Professor of Business Administration and Senior Associate Dean at Harvard Business School, presented her research and hypothesis on why such inequality persists. She and her coauthors Irene Padavic and Erin Reid conducted interviews with 107 professionals in a mid-size global consulting firm, where 90% of partners were male. Most employees surveyed said they believed that the inequity was due to the fact that women are disproportionally affected by personal obligations, which can hold them back in a corporate environment where 70-hour weeks are common.

This idea isn’t new; it has been circulated in the news media for over a decade since it was first prominently discussed in a 2003 New York Times Magazine article titled, “Why Don’t More Women Get to the Top? They Choose Not To.”

Professor Ely has an alternative hypothesis, however: that this phenomenon is caused by overselling and over delivery (i.e. overpromising) on the part of partners, paired with associates’ compliance in order to stand out as strong employees.

This creates a 24/7 work culture within elite firms that makes it virtually impossible to balance one’s personal and professional lives, for both men and women. Instead of addressing this culture head on, Ely et al argue that employees use a social defense (a collective arrangement used by an organization to protect against threats and conflicts) to fend off the anxiety this conflict causes.

This social defense splits the professional and personal spheres and then projects the latter onto women. By psychologically assigning women to the private sphere (what Ely calls “privatizing women”), organizations perpetuate the idea that women will prioritize their personal life over their professional one, making them less able to take on management work.

Unfortunately, policy changes may not be enough to resolve this pervasive issue. For example, many elite firms have improved their family leave policies, but women still overwhelmingly use these policies compared to men. Ely argues that a shift in culture is needed, paired with dialogue that references the changes and what they mean for the narrative of the organization.

Download the seminar podcast (right click and save)

Empowering Afghan Women

Whispering wind skims sides of sand dunes. A young girl, maybe eight years old, is heaving yellow plastic canisters toward a clay hut. In an Afghan village, where the gray beards make all decisions, fetching water is a girl’s duty. This is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman, but one woman – MIT Professor Fotini Christia – keeps coming back. She has interviewed war lords, studied alliances of Taliban fighters, and now she is surveying villagers to evaluate the impact of the National Solidarity Program.  

The NSP is the largest development program in Afghanistan’s history and is unusually popular. Though it is funded by the World Bank and foreign governments like any other development scheme, the Afghans own the process. Afghan government administers the NSP to 29,000 villages through a system of elected local community development councils (CDCs), which decide on infrastructure projects for their community. These councils are not the usual circles of bearded men. For a village to receive aid, half of the CDC members must be women and at least one project must be targeted to women’s needs.

What is the impact of this program on women in this male-dominated society? That is one of the parameters Professor Christia is evaluating in a randomized field experiment. Because the program could not be delivered to all villages at once, she was able to select 250 villages for the treatment group and 250 similar villages for the control group. Her team of dedicated enumerators trekked to these remote villages to survey and interview residents in 2007, before projects commenced, then in 2009, and finally in 2011 when the projects were completed. The final evaluation results are not yet available, but Professor Christia shared some preliminary findings.

The most hopeful results were in relation to attitudes toward women’s civic participation, socialization and economic activity. Namely, in villages that received the NSP both men and women were more likely to say that women should have input on electing the village head and that there is at least one woman in the community who is well respected by both men and women. These villagers were also less likely to say that women should not have any decision-making roles. Moreover, women in the treatment villages were more likely to have become engaged in an income-generating activity, and to have developed support networks with each other. On the family attitude front, however, no statistically significant differences were observed with regard to women owning assets or being consulted about family spending decisions.

Changing entrenched gender roles is difficult enough at Harvard and MIT, not to mention a conservative village in the heart of a country ravaged by civil war.With that in mind, Professor Christia makes a compelling case that the NSP and the ongoing participation of women in local decisions is critical to moving Afghanistan forward. For instance, in selecting infrastructure projects for their communities, women were more likely than men to invest in wells and schools. Perhaps with a shorter distance to haul water, their daughters will be more likely to go to school.

Anya Malkov is an MPP candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School, a WAPPP Cultural Bridge Fellow, and an alumna of From Harvard Square to the Oval Office.

It’s as simple as it is profound...

The Woman: Melanne Verveer, U.S. Ambassador-at-large for Global Women’s Issues

Last week I had the honor of hearing Ambassador Verveer speak to a crowded room of incredibly impressive women -- the capstone to three days of events, courtesy of the Women in Public Policy bi-annual board meeting. While this post will certainly fall short of the event, I will try and capture just a smidgeon of the essence from someone whose impact is as simple as it is profound: focus on women.  

Four Areas

Ambassador Verveer stressed four areas critical to elevating the status of women: 

1. Access to education
2. Economic participation
3. Access to basic health care
4. Political engagement

These four simple criteria provide both the foundation, as well as the strategies, to gauge and increase the status of women anywhere in the world. And, unfortunately, nowhere does parity on all four of these criteria exist. 

Why are these areas important? 

Education: When women and girls are educated, it provides a positive feedback loop that breaks the cycle of poverty. Girls marry later, have fewer children, raise healthier families, and are more likely to invest in their community. It has an exponential, and extensive, ripple effect that raises individuals and communities out of poverty. It is often colloquially referred to as The Girl Effect.

Economic participation: When women have access to economic opportunities, they reinvest 90 percent -- 90 percent -- into their families, communities, and countries. They raise the standard of living not just for themselves, but the world around them. They invest in the education of their children, the resources of their communities, and their household and financial assets. In places where banking sectors are slim or nonexistent, increased assets in the form of livestock or crops often serve as a necessary form of capital to protect against financial shocks, usually for medical emergencies. 

However, it goes beyond this; in countries where women are economically empowered, the entire countries’ GDP rises. Goldman Sachs calls it “Womenomics”. At a 2011 APEC summit, Secretary Clinton remarked that, “by increasing women’s participation in the economy and enhancing their efficiency and productivity, we can bring about a dramatic impact on the competitiveness and growth of our economies.” Ambassador Verveer also gave this staggering statistic: $46 billion is lost in economic growth from restricted job opportunities for women. The numbers seem to speak for themselves, but they are infrequently echoed.

Healthcare: In addition to economic inclusion, and especially in developing counties, having access to basic healthcare services is critical to ensuring equality. Women and girls are less likely to receive necessary immunizations or medical treatment, and limited financial resources are often extended only for boys. However, when women and girls have access to basic medical care, they are less likely to die in childbirth, more likely to see their children live past the age of five, and tend to raise healthier families. It provides another mechanism to break the cycle of poverty while simultaneously decreasing maternal and child mortality rates. 

Political participation: Political engagement is paramount. In countries where women are not allowed to receive inheritance or are denied property rights, they lack the legal and political rights to change these laws and policies. Even in the U.S., women represent less than 17 percent of Congress. Holding such a minimal amount of power prevents the dialogue and discourse from tackling issues impacting 50 percent of the population -- equal pay, preventative health care, and violence against women. Outside the U.S., and in newly minted countries, constitutions are being written without a single female voice. The inclusion and acceptance of women in the political process is essential to increasing their equality.

While these four areas are essential, they are not exhaustive. Ambassador Verveer discussed several other arenas where the role of women are paramount, yet often neglected. 

Women, Peace and Security

In December of last year, the U. S. State Department released the U.S. Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security. The plan calls for women to be integrated into peace processes, conflict-prevention, transitional committees, and negotiating teams. Perhaps more importantly, it provides a bold declaration from the U.S. government that women are essential, perhaps even the crucial linchpin, to continued peace, stability and prosperity for countries. Personally, I like to believe the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize Laureates send a similar international message. 

Women are the canary

Ambassador Verveer said the State Department often views the role of women in a society as the canary. In regions where international security concerns are heightened, the role of women can speak volumes about the direction the country is headed. While the Ambassador did not mention specific situations, the metaphor easily translates: when the role of women is silenced or compromised, countries often find themselves headed towards instability.  

The importance of allies

Ambassador Verveer added an additional, often overlooked, component to the discussion - the importance of allies, specifically men, in securing the equality and inclusion of women. Allies are fundamental to encouraging this paradigm shift in women’s economic and political participation.  “Women’s issues are still perceived as ‘soft’. In reality, women’s issues are the hardest issues out there.” However, this asymmetry in power can be broken, especially when groups are familiar with the social, moral, and economic justifications of women's rights.  

Melissa Sandgren is a MPP1 at the Harvard Kennedy School and a participant in WAPPP's From Harvard Square to the Oval Office program.

*Photo cpyright World Economic Forum (www.weforum.org) / Photo Eric Miller emiller@iafrica.com

How to Transform a Global Health System

The Woman: Paula Johnson, Chief, Division of Women's Health, Brigham and Women's Hospital; Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

The Talk: Women's Health and Health System Reform: The Route to Transformational Development?

The Question: How do we transform a global health system that neglects gender?

As women continue to lag behind men in health and preventative care, the need for a health system transformation could not be greater. Yet, health access for women also requires recognition of the intricate relationship between politics, economics, education and current health systems. Fundamentally, the advancement of women hinges on improving their state of health and similarly, better outcomes for global health call for a gender-focused approach.

Women as mothers, individuals, and citizens

Dr. Johnson started her lecture with an overlooked angle to the question about improving health. As women, who are we and how do our multiple identities factor into global health? As mothers, Johnson says, women’s health needs will be neo-natal and maternal health services. As individuals, girls and women require reproductive and general health education catered to them. Women often act as family caregivers, providing “about 80 percent of the home health care”.

According to Johnson, health care systems must also treat women as citizens, who have risk for different kinds of diseases than men and who disproportionately bear the burden of disease. For example, women have a higher incidence of chronic diseases and a higher likelihood to suffer from anxiety and depression. Upper respiratory illness, often from exposure in kitchen spaces, also impacts more women around the world.

The roles of women and their distinctive health needs reinforce why health care changes must have targeted programs for women. The equity argument set aside, improving health circumstances for women can have a ripple effect. Johnson cites how Turkey and Sri Lanka developed female-focused health programs that may have resulted in higher national income, lower poverty rates, and increased global competitiveness.

Accountability in programs and public discourse

How do we create better health care access for women? Johnson answer: “data”. Policies such as the U.S. Affordable Care Act require a “mechanism to ensure that the policies do what they are supposed to do.” This means collecting data that is aggregated by gender and race, program monitoring with data analysis, and framing debate the about health policies with numbers.

Public discourse and political debate are key to reforms. Yet, at least for the United States, “Political divisions limit the conversation to abortion and contraception, making it extremely difficult to elevate other issues.” Johnson suggests “setting aside advocacy and the ideological arguments” for those based on numbered reasoning. She reminisced about a previous visit to the Kennedy School, where a debate on controversial topics in health took place. Ideology controlled, both sides were asked how they would improve women’s health.

Brooke Davis is a MPP1 at the Harvard Kennedy School and a State Department foreign affairs fellow.

Miss Representation - WAPPP Screening Event

Last week WAPPP hosted Jennifer Siebel-Newsom, the director and producer of Miss Representation. The 2011 documentary correlates the negative representation of women in the media to the dearth of females in power and politics.

The film opens with the following statistics:

- Three percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women.
- 17 percent of government leaders are female.
- Women hold only five percent of clout positions in media.

And the numbers go on and on.

“I’m a firm believer that if you can see it, you can be it. If you can’t see it, you can’t be it,” says Siebel-Newsom. Boys and girls never see women playing the role of the scientist, the president, the CEO; instead, “what the media communicates is that a woman’s value is not her intelligence, it’s her body.”

Miss Representation finds the average teenager consumes up to ten hours of media per day. “The media has this incredible power -- this incredible ability -- to dictate our cultural values and gender norms,” expressed Siebel-Newsom. What boys and girls are seeing are images, story-lines, and portrayals that hyper-sexualize and hyper-masculinize gender roles.

“Women are told the only way to assert power is through sex, and so the only message young girls are getting is that ‘sex is power’. This is not right.” What is worse, finds Siebel-Newsom, is that, “we’re exporting this culture to the rest of the world. The gender norms being perpetuated in the US are influencing millions all around the world.”

Siebel-Newsom says that until women are able to write their own stories, and control their own representations, these stereotypes will persist. How do we do this? We start a movement. Join the Miss Representation movement, or find a screening near you.

Fill In the Blank - WAPPP Seminar Series

The Woman: Katie Baldiga, Doctoral Candidate, Harvard University
The Talk: Gender Differences in Willingness to Guess and the Implications for Test Scores
The Question: Do Men and Women Perform Differently on SATs?

The short answer, according to Katie Baldiga of Harvard University, is yes.

In a recent study, Baldiga discovered that when men and women were given multiple choice tests, men were more likely to guess answers they didn't know, while women were likely to skip questions they didn't know, resulting in an on-average reduction of 5 points from their raw score. In SAT terms, this is a 70 point drop.

This carries implications for how men and women perform in testing environments, says Baldiga, because the data suggests that such tests reward risk-takers rather than those who are risk averse. Ruling out lack of knowledge or confidence as factors, Baldiga was able to find a link between women's risk aversion, their desire to compete, and how many questions they skipped. The results have interesting implications: women answer only what they think they know, while men tend to answer regardless of the consequences.

The results carry important implications for future standardized test design. Might we, for instance, design a multiple-choice format that doesn't penalize skipped questions? Is there a way of controlling for risk in standardized tests?

If we do so, we may even the playing field between those who take risks and those who don't. Or, as Victoria Budson mentioned, we may even the playing field between those who guess right and few times, or those who guess wrong, but guess often -- and are rewarded for it.

*Photo courtesy of Education Week

Effie-Michelle Metallidis is an MPP1 candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School and a participant in WAPPP's From Harvard Square to the Oval Office program.

Do Women Make Board Meetings More Effective? - WAPPP Seminar Series

The Woman: Miriam Schwartz-Ziv, Fellow, Program on Corporate Governance, Harvard Law School
The Talk: When All Are A-board: Does the Gender of Directors Matter? (paper pdf)
The Question: Do Women Make Firm Boards More Effective?

Imagine you're a man walking into a meeting of your firm for the first time and see this group of individuals discussing decisions in the company:

Seems like a pretty normal set-up. A majority-male board -- which remains the standard in most private-sector firms -- awaits you.

Your group of 7-10 people will meet, discuss, and make recommendations to the CEO in an environment that is off the record, behind closed doors.

Now, imagine you walk into the same board room and see this:

Does the gender change effect how productive a company is?

According to Miriam Schwartz-Ziv, mixed gender boards that have 3 or more female directors present at meetings perform better than all-male boards.

Researching over a year's worth of minutes from 11 firms in Israel, Schwartz-Ziv was able to calculate small but significant rises in the amount of initiative boards took relative to previous meetings, as well as how much information the board asks from the CEO (when controlling for 3+ women, she found that there was an 87% increase in asking for information).

According to Schwartz-Ziv, these two metrics imply that there is a "peer monitoring" effect that forces the genders to be more proactive. "Women may tend to not assume as much as men do, so they ask for more information," say Schwartz-Ziv. "And because someone besides men is in the room, there's a feeling of needing to take action'."

What exactly is at play is hard to tell. Since board meetings happen behind closed doors, it's often difficult to understand how content, interpersonal relations, and personality play into the decision-making process. Since the study was conducted in Israel, it's also difficult to know if the results would be replicable in countries where gender parity is far wider, or where women do not have strong leadership roles in the private sector.

Lastly, is the peer monitoring effect a question of gender and status, or just gender? Put another way, if a female secretary were in the room instead of a director, would men still feel pressed to be more productive at their meetings?

While these questions remain, Schwartz-Ziv's study has important policy implications for firms that are thinking about whether or not they should factor gender into their leadership decisions. At best, there is evidence to imply that it may be better to encourage more female leadership at the decision-making process in order to make firms more productive.

When Daddy is CEO - WAPPP Seminar Series

The Man: David Ross, Assistant Professor of Management, Columbia University
The Talk: Like Daughter, Like Father: How Employees’ Wages Change When CEOs Have Daughters
The Question: Do people get paid more if their CEOs have daughters?

Daddy's little girl may be a boost to his workforce -- in Denmark, at least. Recent research by David Ross of Columbia University in the country suggests that when male CEOs have daughters, they tend to on average pay their employees more than if they have boys.

Why?

It's a thorny issue. Some people (including some who attended the seminar) may balk at the idea that men think more like women once they have daughters. But these are exactly the assumptions the study uses to conduct its research. Ross's intuition based on his own experience having daughters got him thinking that:

• When anybody has a child, they tend to start thinking about the well-being of others.

• This proximity matters when it comes to leading a group of employees

• When men in particular have girls, they may be more conscious of having to protect/care for someone's well-being -- a "nurture" effect that women tend to exhibit more often.

The results of the research back up Ross's claim: On average, men pay their employees o.4% more when they have daughters. What's more:

• This only happens when have their first daughter. It doesn't happen with subsequent children.
• People who are closer in proximity to the CEO - ie, higher rank in the company - also tend to get paid more than people who know the CEO less or are a lower rank.
• The age and education of the CEO don't really matter - the effect is the same across all groups.

The limitations of the study are many, however. Chiefly, can the Danish example be extrapolated to other countries where gender parity is worse, or where parents do not share the same burden of raising a child? What if the effect is actually negative - that is, daughters don't have an effect at all, but having a son actually makes CEOs pay employees less? And since the data only analyzes numbers, we can't make a causal claim by observing behavior: our evidence is at best circumstantial.

At the very least, Ross's research backs up the idea that the wage gap persists, and that seemingly innocuous variables like the gender of a CEO's child can make a difference.


*Photo Courtesy Smithsonian Magazine


Effie-Michelle Metallidis is a guest student blogger for the Women and Public Policy Program and Master in Public Policy first-year student at Harvard Kennedy School.

How Are Women Doing? The World Bank Weighs in on Gender & Development - WAPPP Seminar Series

The Men: Sudhir Shetty, Sector Manager, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management, The World Bank; and Jishnu Das, Senior Economist in the Development Research Group, The World Bank

The Talk: World Development Report: Gender Equality and Development

The Question: Are women better or worst off than they've been in previous decades?

Not all inequalities are created equal.

At least, that's what researchers at the World Bank have concluded with the release of this year's Gender Development Gap report.

Sudhir Shetty and Jishnu Das, two economists who worked on the report, were on hand at WAPPP to present the latest findings to the Women's Leadership Board at WAPPP on how women have progressed around the world in the past few decades.

The results are positive, but reveal that there's still a long way to go.

While some areas such as education have improved dramatically, researchers says, inequality stubbornly persists in areas such as maternal mortality, HIV/AIDS infection, the wage gap, and domestic violence.

The reason, say Shetty and Das, is a complex interaction between markets, households and formal institutions that must all work together in order to ensure women are supported by every aspect of society.

For instance, curbing female mortality necessitates deep political will on the part of the government to reform its institutions. "I have never been to a district hospital in India where a doctor is not drunk after 8 o'clock," says Das. "The institutions are just not working, and these are the problems that effect female mortality."

The researchers say that there are ways to tackle these challenges. To reduce female mortality, for instance, countries must concentrate on improving clean water and sanitation so that infant girls stand a better chance of survival. A look at the historical data in the US and Europe revealed telling data to the team: as access to clean water improved at the turn of the 20th century, so too did the survival of baby girls.

Some challenges like domestic abuse, however, require a far more complex approach. Political will must drive an agenda that prioritizes the well-being of women and their children; economic opportunities such as access to land, better infrastructure, and greater emphasis on child care can all contribute to a shifting climate that empowers women within their households and in society. Buy-in from men is also a critical aspect in reducing domestic violence; as Shetty says: "This report is about gender -- not just women."

*Photo Image Courtesy of World Bank
Effie-Michelle Metallidis is a guest student blogger for the Women and Public Policy Program and Master in Public Policy first-year student at Harvard Kennedy School.

Why Rising Crime Rates in India May Be a Good Thing - WAPPP Seminar Series

The Woman: Lakshmi Iyer, Associate Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

The Talk: The Power of Political Voice: Women's Political Representation and Crime in India

The Question: Does female leadership affect crime rates in India?

It's not every day that rising crime rates are seen as a good thing. But according to Lakshmi Iyer at Harvard Business School, this statistic may reveal how women in India are gaining better access to the country's justice system.

According to recent research conducted by her and her team, reports of crimes against women have risen as more female politicians have been elected at the local, district and village council levels over the past 2 decades. Rather than an increase in crimes against women, Iyer argues that the rising rate is due to greater reporting of crimes--which is good news for women's access to the justice system in a system ridden by caste, social hierarchy, and persistent gender disparity.

Greater female political representation has meant:

• Better Response from Law Enforcement: a female politician may have more inclination to pursue legislation for women against crimes and violence, and also construct policy based on the needs of her constituents.
• Better Public Perception: interaction with female leaders in India has shown that areas with female leadership have positive views of female leadership
• The Role Model Effect: women may be less tolerant of abuse once they see others in power, and are motivated to take a stand against injustice.

Using crime statistics from 1985-2007, Iyer and her team were able to analyze how crimes against women were reported. The result?

As more females were elected at lower levels of government beginning in 1993, crimes against women increased on the books by 44% - an astounding figure that flabbergasted the team. "We first thought we were wrong, because the number was so big," says Iyer. "We ran the regression again because we were expecting crime rates to decline."The statistic also allowed researchers to glean how attitudes towards women may be changing on the ground.

The police, a traditionally male-dominated institution, may be treating women's crimes more seriously now that women are accompanied by a village counsellor to help them support their claim. This is key in a country where Iyer says attitudes towards crimes against women are still casual. "One policeman told me: 'The husband has a right to beat the wife. in fact, I beat my wife too'."

But some think that education, rather than political representation, will ultimately change attitudes towards women in India. A former chief of police was on hand at the seminar to address the problem of gender disparity. "Many times, if the woman elected to office is illiterate, her husband is ruling by proxy. I believe it is education that will really make the difference for women's progress in India."

*Caption: Pratibha Patil, India's president, makes a peace sign after being elected the first female president of India in 2007. Courtesy Reuters
Effie-Michelle Metallidis is a guest student blogger for the Women and Public Policy Program and Master in Public Policy first-year student at Harvard Kennedy School.

Women, Business, and the Law - WAPPP Seminar Series

The Woman: Rita Ramalho, Program Manager, Enterprise Analysis Unit, The World Bank Group

The Talk: Women, Business and the Law 2012: Removing Barriers to Economic Inclusion

The Question: How do laws in different countries affect a woman's ability to start businesses and get jobs?

A lower retirement age sounds pretty decent, right? Who wants to work into their 70s, after all? Shorter working days sound good, too. A good work-life balance is strike in this fast-paced world.

But while these may sound like job perks, they're the sorts of prohibitive laws that keep women from achieving the same economic status as men in many countries, say researchers from the World Bank.

In a recent survey of 141 economies conducted by the Enterprise Analysis Unit of the World Bank Group, researchers found that 103 countries have laws that may hinder women's economic opportunities. The laws, which range from restricting the property rights of women in the Phillipines to not paying for maternity leave in Papua New Guinea, account for disparities in income, and affect the way women make decisions about whether to enter the workforce.

"In practice, there's less women in the private sector and [less] entrepreneurs," says Rita Ramalho, the EAU's Program Manager. "We want to see what regulations play a role in that."

According to Ramalho's team, there are a lot. Legally, women can be restricted by:

• Needing permission from men to travel outside the home
• Needing a male witness to sign contracts or conduct business transactions
• Being barred from deciding on property and finance decisions if men are the only legally recognized heads of the household
• Getting married. Marriage can restrict a woman's rights to property, business transactions, and sometimes also results in her paying higher taxes.

The good news is that while gender disparity still exists on the books, many countries are amending their laws. The most active reformer has been Kenya, who amended its constitution last year to grant women equal inheritance property rights and the ability to confer citizenship onto their children. These small changes allow women greater autonomy over their property, their children's future, and the ability to decide with greater independence.

Keep up with Rita's blog to find out more about the World Bank's research on women.

*Above: A Kenyan woman learns to sew through a World Relief microfinance initiative. Courtesy world-relief.org
Top: American women assemble a B-17 bomber during World War II on an air base in Long Beach, California. Courtesy Library of Congress
Effie-Michelle Metallidis is a guest student blogger for the Women and Public Policy Program and Master in Public Policy first-year student at Harvard Kennedy School.

Education or Marriage? In Mexico, Gender Often Decides - WAPPP Seminar Series

The Woman: Katja Kaufmann, WAPPP Fellow, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics and IGIER, Bocconi University, Italy

The Talk: Educational Choices and Subjective Expectations of Returns: Evidence on Intra-Household Decisions and Gender Differences

The Question: Why do teenagers in developing countries decide to go to scho

ol, and is your decision based on whether you're a girl or a boy?

Policymakers interested in closing the gender gap in schools, pay attention. A new paper on why students in Mexico decide to pursue higher education may hold key answers to how men and women invest in their futures - and why marriage doesn't seem to be the answer anymore.

A paper penned by Katja Kaufmann and the economist Orazio Attanasio last year studied the decision-making process of families in Mexico deciding

to send their children to high school and college. The team was curious to see if expectations of making more money by getting a better job with a higher level of education mattered more for young men or women, and if education had begun to replace marriage for females seeking a stable future.

The Results: When it comes to boys attending high school, their decision -- as well as that of their parents, matters. Boys are more likely to enter their senior year of high school if the family supports their decision. Attending college, on the other hand, depends on the boys themselves: hopes for a good job and higher pay drives many to pursue higher degree.

Girls, however, seem ruled by a maternal hand. Whether girls enter high school or college largely depends on a mother's opinion, and whether potential marriage prospects outweigh the benefits of earning an extra

degree. (The influence of fathers, meanwhile, was not directly studied. One-fourth of the participants came from mother-only families, making it hard to control for the role that paternal decision-making plays.)

Twist: While girls may forego college opportunities for marriage, they are also more likely to go to college if they live in a region where there aren't many educated men. Greater potential for an educated mate, or the safety of attaining better working opportunities as a single woman, drive many to attend college.

Take away: Ms Kaufmann was surprised by her findings; education has improved tremendously in Mexico over the past few decades, and opportunities are equally available for boys and girls. She wasn't expecting such a strong influence from mothers on their daughter's education, nor the gender imbalance when it came to making decisions. It would be interesting, she said, to run the same study in a different context, such as the United States.

For policymakers, such findings may have an impact on the design of programs aimed at increasing school enrollment by awarding cash or fellowship grants to students.

Oportunidades, for instance, a social assistance program in Mexico for the poor, is considering the possibility of issuing schooling grants directly to students. This paper could inform how such grants are awarded if it is indeed true that teenagers play a constructive, decisive role

in enrolling and attending school.

*Photos courtesy of poster.4teachers.org and http://www.oportunidades.gob.mx/Portal/

Effie-Michelle Metallidis is a guest student blogger for the Women and Public Policy Program and Master in Public Policy first-year student at Harvard Kennedy School.

Men, Women, Competition, Money - WAPPP Seminar Series

The Woman: Pinar Fletcher, Doctoral Candidate in Organizational Behavior, Harvard Business School

The Talk: Gender and Incentives: An Experimental Study on Competition and Cooperation (co-authored by Iris Bohnet and Kathleen McGinn)

The Question: How does gender influence earning ability in men and women?

Do women cheat themselves out of better pay because they don't like competition?

A new study presented at WAPPP yesterday suggested that this may be the case – but only if they don't like the work they're performing. The paper, “An Experimental Study on Competition and Cooperation”, co-authored by HBS professor Kathleen McGinn WAPPP's director Iris Bohnet, sought to examine the factors that drive competition and cooperation between men and women.

The results, presented by Pinar Fletcher of the Harvard Business School last week, are mildly depressing. They suggest that gender stereotypes may hold true when it comes to understanding how men and women think they should be paid.

When tested in a series of games that asked them to compete in same-sex and mixed-sex teams, women thought they were better at verbal tasks, and felt more comfortable working with other women. Men thought they were better at math, and performed better on this subject with other men.

Critically, men performed better in competitive rather than cooperative settings, and also thought they performed better overall. “Men are more likely to think they will earn more in verbal and math competition than women do,” said Fletcher, a finding which implies that men tend to overestimate their earning ability. Conversely, women underestimate their earning ability in competition and cooperative settings. Such findings, if supported by future studies the team plans to conduct, could have a significant impact in how we understand the way men and women compete for salaries and respond to incentives in the workplace.

This may seem like a disheartening find that feeds prevailing stereotypes: women are talkers, men are number-crunchers. Women shy away from competition, but men thrive on it. But an astute audience of female scientists, statisticians and students were on hand to question the results and suggest that further studies are needed to better understand the dynamics at play.

“Did women like cooperation better because they thought they would win more money, or because they felt more comfortable making mistakes in front of other women?” one student asked, implying that motivation plays a significant role in determining cooperative behavior.

“Did you control for the preference of math or reading?” asked another audience member. The woman, who is a scientist and a mother, questioned to what degree the preference of subject matter (math vs. reading) influenced how well men and women performed such tasks in the study. “There can be a tendency to attribute aspects of personality to gender, but in fact a lot of things are not gender specific,” she said.

For now, the jury is out until the final results of the study are tabulated. But with a lingering gender wage gap that prevails across industries and a yawning wage gap by state in the US, studies such as these can help to unpack the dynamics of a woman's worth in the workplace -- and what may be keeping her from her full due.

*Photo courtesy of online.wsj.com
Effie-Michelle Metallidis is a guest student blogger for the Women and Public Policy Program and Master in Public Policy first-year student at Harvard Kennedy School.