Gender, Structural Transformation, and Academia

Separate spheres ideology – which suggest that men are better suited to and, therefore, have more rights to the public sphere while women are better suited to the domestic sphere – continue to adversely impact women’s ability to compete as equals with men in the labor-force. This ideology, we posit, may particularly find favor in settings where access to highly paid service jobs is rationed. Such settings range from academia to lower income countries undergoing processes of structural transformation. A failure to account for the support that separate spheres ideology gain from those who benefit from restricting women’s access to the public sphere can undermine well-meaning public policies. However, research shows that success in achieving these policy goals is dependent on how well the policies account for initial constraints on women’s agency; such constraints may reflect, for instance, missing markets or conservative gender norms.

The Tobin RAs will work with a team of researchers to analyze data from multiple sources – including historic student files from Cambridge UK and field experiments and labor surveys in India to document the link between labor market conditions and public (male) acceptance of separate sphere norms.