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On the Origins of Gender Roles: Women and the Plough
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This article found that the descendants of societies that traditionally practiced plough agriculture, today have lower rates of female participation in the workplace, in politics, and in entrepreneurial activities, as well as a greater prevalence of attitudes favoring gender inequality.Abstract:
This paper seeks to better understand the historical origins of current differences in norms and beliefs about the appropriate role of women in society. We test the hypothesis that traditional agricultural practices influenced the historical gender division of labor and the evolution and persistence of gender norms. We find that, consistent with existing hypotheses, the descendants of societies that traditionally practiced plough agriculture, today have lower rates of female participation in the workplace, in politics, and in entrepreneurial activities, as well as a greater prevalence of attitudes favoring gender inequality. We identify the causal impact of traditional plough use by exploiting variation in the historical geo-climatic suitability of the environment for growing crops that differentially benefited from the adoption of the plough. Our IV estimates, based on this variation, support the findings from OLS. To isolate the importance of cultural transmission as a mechanism, we examine female labor force participation of second-generation immigrants living within the US.read more
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Culture and Institutions
Alberto Alesina,Paola Giuliano +1 more
TL;DR: A growing body of empirical work measuring different types of cultural traits has shown that culture matters for a variety of economic outcomes as mentioned in this paper, focusing on one specific aspect of the relevance of culture: its relationship to institutions.
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Large-Scale Psychological Differences Within China Explained by Rice Versus Wheat Agriculture
TL;DR: This study tested 1162 Han Chinese participants in six sites and found that rice-growing southern China is more interdependent and holistic-thinking than the wheat-growing north, and it is found that modernization and pathogen prevalence theories do not fit the data.
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Growing up in a Recession
TL;DR: This article found that individuals who experienced a recession when young believe that success in life depends more on luck than effort, support more government redistribution, and tend to vote for left-wing parties.
World happiness report 2013
TL;DR: The World Happiness Report 2013 as discussed by the authors is a contribution to that crucial debate and is sponsored by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and the World Happiness Association (WHA).
Posted Content
The Roots of Gender Inequality in Developing Countries
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss several mechanisms through which, as countries grow, gender gaps narrow and explain the high degree of gender inequality in developing countries in education, personal autonomy, and more.
References
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Book
The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century
TL;DR: The third wave of democratization in the late 1970s and early 1990s as mentioned in this paper is the most important political trend in the last half of the 20th century, according to the authors.
Book
The geography of thought : how Asians and Westerners think differently--and why
TL;DR: The authors showed an animated underwater scene to his American students, they zeroed in on a big fish swimming among smaller fish, while Japanese subjects made observations about the background environment, and the different "seeings" are a clue to profound underlying cognitive differences between Westerners and East Asians.
Journal ArticleDOI
Cultural Beliefs and the Organization of Society: A Historical and Theoretical Reflection on Collectivist and Individualist Societies
TL;DR: In this article, a comparative historical analysis of the relations between culture and institutional structure is presented, showing the theoretical importance of culture in determining institutional structures, in leading to their path dependence, and in forestalling successful intersociety adoption of institutions.