Gender and Development

Question 1

Name some dimensions amongst which gender gaps exist.

Answer 1

• at birth
• health and survival
• education and training
• marriage
• household decision-making power
• asset ownership and inheritance
• labor force participation
• occupational and sectoral choice
• access to credit
• wages/earnings
• carrer progression/ access to management positions
• political representation

Question 2

Give some intuition about missing women.

Answer 2

• estimation around 100 mio missing women: women who should be alive and are not (1990)
• 126m in 2010, 150m by 2025

Question 3

What is the hypothesis behind the paper: “Why do mothers breastfeed girls less than boys”?

Answer 3

One reason for girls haveing poorer survival rates than boys in India is that strong preferences for sons leads women to wean their daughters off breast milk sooner
» breastfeeding temporarily reduces fecundity and women tend to wean their older children when becoming pregnant again

Question 4

What are the finding of “why do mother breastfeed girls less than boys”?

Answer 4

• Breastfeeding duration increases with birth order, especially when women’s family size is close to their reported ideal
• Breastfeeding duration is lowest ofr daughters, especially those without older brothers, as their parents try again for a son
• Child survival exhibits similar patters, especially in settings where the alternative to breast milk are unsanitary

Question 5

Describe the breastfeeding “Survival” curve in the “why do mother breastfeed girls less than boys” paper

Answer 5

• Stepwise decline of % of breastfed babies
• After 12 months a clear gap emerges between girls’ and boys’ breastfeeding duration
• mean duration for breastfeeding: boys: 23.26 months, girls: 22.33 months

Question 6

In “why do mother breastfeed girls less than boys”, describe how birthorder affects breastfeeding duration.

Answer 6

• earlier born children are breastfed for short time periods in general, with girls being brestfed shorter than boys
• with increasing birth order, children are brestfed for longer, but with a gap emerging and widening between boys and girls (gap largest for fourth child)

Question 7

Give an intuition about the spousal age gap.

Answer 7

• it decreases with development (measured in GDP(capita)
• marriage age gap (husband-wife) large in SSA countries

Question 8

What is the motivation behind the paper “age of marriage, weather shocks, and the direction of marriage payments”?

Answer 8

• 700 million women married before their 18th birthday (56% in South Asia, 42% in SSA)
• Persistent tradition of marriage payments in both regions:
  > SSA: traditionally the groom or his family pay a dowry to the bride’s family at the time of marriage (bride price)
  > South Asia: traditionally the bride’s family pays a dowry to the groom

Question 9

What is the research question of the paper “age of marriage, weather shocks, and the direction of marriage payments”?

Answer 9

Do economic shocks affect daughters’ age at marriage?
How does this depend on marriage payment customs?

Question 10

What is the hypothesis in the paper “age of marriage, weather shocks, and the direction of marriage payments”?

Answer 10

• Relationship between economic shocks and timing of marriage depends on direction of payment (bride price vs dowry)
  -> when aggregate income is temporarily low, households prefer to bring forward (bride price) or delay (dowry) their daughter’s marriage in order to consume the marriage transfer

Question 11

What data is used in the paper “age of marriage, weather shocks, and the direction of marriage payments”?

Answer 11

• Droughts: calendar year rainfall below the 15th percentile of a location’s long-run rainfall distirbution
  > SSA: droughts reduce average yearly crop yields by 12%
  > India: droughts reduce average yields by 16%
• Child marriage: 73 survey waves across 31 SSA countries + 1998 wave for india
• Final Sample: 300k women in SSA and 60k in India

Question 12

Name the findings of the paper “age of marriage, weather shocks, and the direction of marriage payments”.

Answer 12

• Drought increases child marriage in SSA but decreases it in India
• Significant effect only where the marriage payment is the prevailing norm:
  > exploit historical heterogeneity in marriage payments across ethnic groups/ locations
  > within SSA: effect of dorught is only significant where there is high bride-price prevalence
  > within India: effect is strongest in the North for earlier cohorts and increases over time in the South
  **-> Support the interpretation that marriage payments generate incentives for parents to time their daughters’ marriage as a consumption smoothing tool in response to negative shocks **

Question 13

What are the policy implications of the paper “age of marriage, weather shocks, and the direction of marriage payments”?

Answer 13

• provide consumption smoothing alternatives at times of draught (bride price)
• what is the effect of young marriage? Negative effects for women/girls? -> should it be prevented?

Question 14

Give some stylized facts about MMR.

Answer 14

• a women’s lifetime risk of maternal death is 1 in 45 in los-income countries
• skilled care before, during and after childbirth can prevent about 75% of maternatl deaths

Question 15

What is the motivation behind the paper on female political representation and MMR?

Answer 15

Why are maternal mortality rates still so high?

Question 16

What is the hypothesis of the paper on female political representation and MMR?

Answer 16

• raising the share of women in policy can generate sharper MMR reduction:
  > women may have stronger preference over MMR reduction
  > women have dfferent information over MMR
  > gender quotas give women instrumental power

Question 17

What is the empirical method of the paper on female political representation and MMR?

Answer 17

• exploitation of aprupt legislation of quotas sweeping though LICs since the 1990s
• within sample: 22 countries adopted quotas which constitutionally protect reserved seats for women in parliament
• Identifying assumption:
  > countries that do & do not adopt quotas are inherently the same (parallel trends assumption)
  > Threats: implementation of quotas driven by general societal changes (no evidence of pre-trends)

Question 18

What are the key findings of the paper on female political representation and MMR?

Answer 18

• increase in representation of women leaders in parliament leads to a sharp and persistent reduction in MMR (quota leads to an increase in share of women in parliament, quota leads to a reduction in MMR)

Question 19

What is the mechansim behind the findings in the paper on female political representation and MMR?

Answer 19

• Quotas increased the threee dimensions that WHO recommends universal coverage of for MMR reduction:
  > Skilled birth assistance (5.8pp)
  > prenatal care (4.7 pp)
  > access to contraception (1.7pp)
• 6-7% decline in total fertility rate > high fertility associated with higher MMR risk per birth (decline will have a scale effect)
• Educational attainment increases significantly more for girls than for boys (+0.5 years for women age 15-19)

Question 20

Explain how social norms can be a contributor to persistent gender gaps.

Answer 20

• much of the residual/unexplained gap in earnings is typically attributed to social norms around women’s role in society

Question 21

What is the child penalty?

Answer 21

Labor market gaps interact with gender gaps within the household, especially those surrounding childcare -> called the child penalty
-> it accounts for much of the gender gap in earnings

Question 22

What is the hypothesis of the paper “Gender norms are unlikely to have fallen out of the sky”? Is it confirmed?

Answer 22

Geographical variation in values around women’s work is rooted in differential ancestral cultivation
> Hoe cultivation: labor intensive, handheld tools
> Plough cultivation: capital intensive, physically demanding to pull the plough or control the animal that pulls it

• Men’s physical strength may give thema comparative advantage at plough cultivation, whereas women can do hoe cultivation just as well
  > Societies that predominantly used the plough developed a more gendered division of labor, with women working inside the home
  > Led to cross-society differences in norms about the appropriate role of women in society which persisted post-industrialisation
  These historical differences do indeed predict geographical variation in female labor force participation

Question 23

Give some intuition about the findings in the paper on women an permiscuity

Answer 23

• Pastoralism: quasi-nomadic lifestlye
• male absence in the settlement -> stronger restrictions on female behavior
  Restriction:
• stronger anti-abortion attitudes
• more likely to have undergons infibulation
• more restricted in their freedom of mobility
• more restrictive norms about women’s promiscuity

Question 24

Explain the setup and findings of the study about reshaping adolescents’ gender attitudes.

Answer 24

RCT showing that interactive classroom discussions about gender equality over 2.5 years increased students’ support for gender equality and led to more gender-equitable behavior in India

**Key Findings: **
* 14% students who intitially held gender discriminatory attitudes changed their views to be more gender-equal
* No impact on girls’ educational and professional aspirations (they were already as high as that of boys’ before the program)
* Boys report doing more chores but girls do not report doing fewer
* Parents’ gender attitudes, on average, had no impact around how the program affected gender attitudes, aspirations and behaviors
* THe program changes students’ perceptions of social norms about women pursuing employment and university education