ROCKING OUR PRIORS

How do women perpetuate patriarchy? Can vouchers boost female friendships? With what effect? Why does female leadership increase male violence? Join me as I learn from the fantastic Dr Anukriti, researcher at the World Bank https://www.worldbank.org/en/about/people/s/s-anukriti Papers discussed: Women’s Political Representation and Intimate Partner Violence https://www.bu.edu/econ/files/2022/06/AEM_June2022.pdf Curse of the Mummy-ji: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1de4h9a5koz24d9/ajae.12114.pdf?dl=0 Convincing the Mummy-ji: Improving Mother-in-Law Approval of Family Planning in India https://www.dropbox.com/s/16qpjnav28mm6bm/aerp_p.20221122.pdf?dl=0

Some economists assume that paid work enhances women’s bargaining power, such that when women earn their own money they push for greater gender equality. Is that correct? Or is the impact of paid work mediated by social context? Vidya Mahambare and Sowmya Dhanaraj often fascinating insights into this question by exploring what happens when women from North India are recruited and then migrate to either rural or urban garment factories in Tamil Nadu. Listening to their work, I learnt how weaker control mechanisms in cities enable women to pursue wider friendships, explore new environments, and exploit diverse economic opportunities. Vidya Mahambare: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=uxprEP4AAAAJ&hl=en Sowmya Dhanaraj: https://scholar.google.co.in/citations?user=6sBTLREAAAAJ&hl=en

What (if anything) did Acemoglu get wrong? At low levels of development, is democracy really good for growth? Have you changed your mind about religion? On automation, do you now think that culture shapes institutions? Are wages socially determined? With climate breakdown, will you become more of a geographical determinist?

Are you scrambling for research ideas? In this podcast, I outline some important questions, which existing research cannot answer: Do joint families curtail alcoholism and wife-beating? Do male-majority workplaces suppress female employment? Can gender quotas in male-majority workplaces reduce sexism? Why is the American Southeast so patriarchal? Does rule of law reduce brutish masculinity? Did Christianity curb Norse polygamy? Why are there so few female leaders in West Africa? When does religious diversity tighten patriarchal controls? Why is female employment so high among British Indians, but not British Pakistani or Bangladeshis?

Women’s unpaid work is rarely recorded. “Female labor force participation” can thus be radically underestimated. Does that matter?

I want to make a confession. In the past I have got things wrong, seriously wrong. Allow me to share why I was so mistaken and how I came to revise my priors.

Africa’s parliaments are increasingly gender equal, thanks largely to quotas. But there is a curious heterogeneity. Southern and Eastern African legislatures have near parity, while West Africans are ruled by men. Why is West Africa such an outlier?

Our world is marked by the Great Gender Divergence. In South Asia, North Africa and the Middle East, most women remain secluded. Chinese women work but are locked out of politics. Latin America has undergone radical transformation, staging massive rallies against male violence and nearly achieving gender parity in political representation. Scandinavia still comes closest to a feminist utopia, but for most of history Europe was far more patriarchal than matrilineal South East Asia and Southern Africa. What explains the Great Gender Divergence? It emerged in the twentieth century as a result of the great divergence in economic and political development across countries. In countries that underwent rapid growth, technological change freed women from domestic drudgery while industry and services increased demand for their labour. Democratisation is equally fundamental. Overturning men’s political dominance and impunity for violence requires relentless mobilisation. Culture, however, mediates the rate at which women seize opportunities created by development and democratisation. Patrilineal societies face what I call an “honour-income trade-off”. Female employment only rises if its economic returns are sufficiently large to compensate for men’s loss of honour. Otherwise, women remain secluded and surveilled with very few friends. Why do some societies have a stronger preference for female cloistering? To answer that question, we must go back ten thousand years. Over the longue durée, there have been three major waves of patriarchalisation: the Neolithic Revolution, pastoral nomadism, and Islam. These ancient ‘waves’ helped determine how gender relations in each region of the world would be transformed by the onset of modern economic growth. Blog with hyperlinks to references: https://www.draliceevans.com/post/ten-thousand-years-of-patriarchy-1

The vast majority of innovations, companies, and governments are under male authority. Why is this? What led to it? In this piece I crudely synthesise debates on the origins of the patriarchy. Although there is a wealth of research on gender - in different places and time periods, from siloed disciplines and methodologies - it is like a mountain of mosaic pieces. What we have now is millions of fragments. So, let me take a stab at building the mosaic, incorporating insights from archaeology, anthropology, economics, genetics, history, psychology and sociology on the deep roots of the patriarchy. Full text and references: https://www.draliceevans.com/post/an-intellectual-history-of-the-patriarchy

African societies have historically respected women’s authority, spiritual power, physical strength, and moral judgement. Their cosmology upholds gender complementarity. Professor Nwando Achebe (Michigan State University) and I discuss pre-colonial gender relations across Africa. Transcript: https://www.draliceevans.com/post/female-monarchs-and-merchant-queens-in-africa Book: https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Female+Monarchs+and+Merchant+Queens+in+Africa Author, Professor Achebe: https://history.msu.edu/people/faculty/nwando-achebe/