Elena Stancanelli

AIM: In spite of the progress made towards gender equality, the gender gap in wages, promotion, and recognition by peers, is persistent, partly driven by gender biases and cultural norms. This summer school aims at fostering participants knowledge of gender inequality causes and of the effectiveness of targeted interventions.This program aims at providing participants with a thorough knowledge and understanding of the burgeoning literature on the economics of gender. Gender inequality in paid and unpaid work has diminished over time in most countries, thanks to the increasing participation of women in the labour market, the educational achievements of women, their increased representation in the political arena and elsewhere, which has been made possible also by the passing of laws of equality of opportunity by gender, the progress made in health and home technology, and so forth. Nonetheless, gender gaps persist in wages, promotion, career perspectives and recognition by peers, which is, at least in part, driven by explicit and implicit gender biases, and by deeply rooted cultural norms and stereotypes. What policies can help reduce these persistent gaps? For example, how effective are gender quotas in achieving gender equality? Beyond its lectures, participants will have an opportunity to present their own research ideas and papers in this area.

TOPICS:

Household Time Allocation: An Introduction to Gender Economics – Elena Stancanelli
Fertility, Family, and Father’s Leave Policies –Libertad González
Gender Inequality in the Labour Market -–Thomas Breda
Gender, Economics, and Covid-19 –Libertad González
Gender and Negotiation – Nagore Iriberri
Cultural Gender Norms –Claudia Senik
Women in Academia – Nagore Iriberri
Women in STEM –Thomas Breda
Gender Biases and Stereotypes: Research Methods – Elena Stancanelli

The Costs of Gender Inequality and the Efficacy of Gender Quotas – Elena Stancanelli

Household Time Allocation: An Introduction to Gender Economics – Elena Stancanelli

Overview

This course will present the concepts and practice of household time allocation, which form the roots of the economics of gender, and lay out the general framework for the economics of gender. The theoretical model of household decision making, encompassing labour supply, consumption and household production decisions, as developed by e.g. Becker, Chiappori, Apps and Rees, will be presented. Time Use Diaries, which are the unique data tool to measure the hours devoted to paid work, unpaid domestic work, parental time, and leisure time will be illustrated with an application for the American Time Use Survey (this last part of the lecture will take place in the laboratory).

Structure

Theoretical framework of Household Decision Making and Time Allocation
Introduction to Gender Economics
The gendered allocation of time: an application using the American Time Use Survey

Fertility, family, and parental leave policies -Libertad González

Overview

The course will present the Becker model of parental investment in children, together with recent literature on fertility and law changes, and conclude with a discussion of the effects of paternity leave policies on gender inequality.

Structure

Becker’s theory of parental investment in children
How did abortion law changes affect fertility and other outcomes for women?
Do father’s parental leave policies reduce gender inequality?

Gender inequality in the Labour Market –Thomas Breda

Overview

This introductory lecture will provide a general overview on the extent of gender inequality in the labor market, its evolution over the past decades and its main possible determinants. Starting from a description of unconditional and conditional gender wage gaps in various countries, it will discuss in turn the possible causes of these gaps: discrimination, segregation across occupations and firms, working time and career trajectories around child birth, differences in preferences or “psychological traits”, etc. Existing and possible policy interventions will finally be discussed along with their justification.

Structure

Overview of gender inequality at work across countries and time
Review of possible explanations
General discussion of possible policy intervention

Gender, economics, and Covid-19 -Libertad González

Overview

The Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically impacted households and some of its effects have not yet resumed. In particular, gender inequality has increased along many dimensions during the pandemic as often, women lost more jobs than men did, but also women performed most of the burden of additional care and domestic work during the lockdowns.

Structure

How did the Covid-19 pandemic affect gender inequality in the labour market?
How did parents share on paid and unpaid work tasks during the pandemic?
How did the impacts vary across different countries?

Gender and Negotiation – Nagore Iriberri

Overview

Women are expected to negotiate less often and get worse deals from negotiations than men. In this course, we review the work in psychology and economics with regard to gender differences in entry into negotiation and gender differences in bargaining outcomes. Ambiguity seems to be the key factor in understanding these differences: ambiguity with respect to whether it is appropriate to negotiate, as well as ambiguity with respect to what one should expect out of the negotiation.

Structure

Gender and negotiations: From “Women don´t ask” to gender differences in negotiation.
Laboratory methods: how to use the laboratory elicitation to study gender and negotiation.
Ambiguity: key element to understand gender differences in negotiation.
Usual suspects: risk preferences, confidence and stereotypes.

Cultural Gender Norms –Claudia Senik

Overview

Gender inequalities are supported by traditional gender roles and identities, and form ‘a cultural equilibrium’. But different gender cultures can form depending on the institutions in each country. Remarkably, the institutions that were set up in the socialist bloc have durably modified the behavior of women and the relations between spouses within the household. The new culture that emerged from this experience has resisted the disappearance of institutions and mechanisms that promoted women’s work and autonomy. This cultural legacy is clearly illustrated by the different behavior of women living in the Länder of the former East versus West Germany.

Structure

The division of tasks within the household: East versus West
Performance in Math and Science: a smaller gender gap in former socialist countries
Educational choices: the specific gender culture of descendants of former socialist countries

Women in Academia – Nagore Iriberri

Overview

Women are underrepresented in many disciplines in academia. This course will present the latest findings of gender differences in scholar output, editorial process, peer recognition and representation in the top scientific societies. The main focus will be in the field of economics, where female representation has been historically low and only recently has reached 20%. Then, we will compare economics with other fields such as psychology and mathematics. Academia offers a big advantage over other labor sectors : productivity measures (in the form of accumulated publications and citations) can be observed and measured.

Structure

Women in academia: gender differences in editorial process and peer recognition.
Methodology: data construction through web scraping, new research opportunities.
From economics to other disciplines.

Women in STEM – Thomas Breda

Overview

Fewer women than men specialize in Science Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields. Why women do not enter math-intensive fields such as physics or computer science? Is this due to underlying discrimination, or to gender differences in academic performance, or to differences in educational choices made by students earlier on? What is the role of gender norms in explaining these facts?

Structure

Why should we care about the underrepresentation of women in STEM?
Are women particularly discriminated against in STEM careers (in and outside academia)?
What are the possible policies to foster female participation in STEM?

Gender Biases and Stereotypes: research methods – Elena Stancanelli

Overview

This course will focus on new recent research methods deployed in the economics literature to measure and possibly, affect implicit gender biases and stereotypes, providing a discussion of the pros and cons of these methods a well as illustrating how to implement them in practice. The focus will be on Implicit Association Tests and Anchoring Vignettes (this lecture will take place in the laboratory).

Structure

How does randomizing female participation to teams at work affect men’s gender attitudes?
Why are female financial advisers who make mistakes being punished much stronger than their male counterparts in the financial sector?
Why are female speakers getting more questions at economics seminars?
How to detect, measure, and change implicit gender biases?
Designing Implicit Association Test and Anchoring Vignette Studies

The costs of Gender Inequality and the Efficacy of Gender Quotas – Elena Stancanelli

Overview

Gender inequality is not only problematic for fairness reasons but also economically costly, as documented in the literature on the costs of foregone diversity, workplace harassment and domestic violence. How effective are targeted policies such as gender quotas at reducing gender inequality?

Structure

How to quantify the costs of gender inequality
The economics costs of workplace harassment and domestic violence
The effectiveness of gender quotas and other gender-targeted interventions
A debate on quota (participants will play gender-quota defendants and opponents)