From faculty meetings and student projects to corporate boards and consulting firms, many decisions are made by groups rather than by individuals. In these settings, individuals may bring differing levels of knowledge and expertise to the table; therefore, the performance of the group depends heavily upon eliciting and acting upon the best information from the most informed individuals. Understanding how individuals make the decision of when toe volunteer information to the group is an important first step toward evaluating the efficiency of different group decision-making procedures. Speaker: Katie Coffman, Assistant Professor of Economics, Ohio State University

The first is based on a paper I will be presenting at the ECPR conference in early September titled “Exploring Viewer Reactions to Media Coverage of Female Politicians.” This paper explores voters’ responses to non-verbal cues provided by politicians and often included in media coverage. Past research on women and politics has found that in its coverage, the media has tended to focus disproportionately on the assertive behavior and emotional displays of female candidates, yet little work has explored the implications of this coverage on voters’ impressions of these political figures despite its potential to evoke or challenge stereotypes of women and/or politicians. This paper begins to unravel some of the impact that these non-verbal cues may have on voters’ evaluations of politicians and in particular female candidates. Speaker: Joanna Everitt, WAPPP Fellow, University of New Brunswick

Hersch’s research shows that female graduates of elite institutions have lower labor market involvement than their counterparts from less selective institutions, with the gap most pronounced among those with children, and especially mothers with an MBA. This talk will provide recent evidence on opting out among women with elite education and examine the role of differences in preferences as well as economic factors in explaining the grater tendency of elites graduates to have lower labor market activity. We will also address societal consequences of reduced labor market activity among women graduates of elite institutions on prospects for women to advance through the professions, whether workplace inflexibility is an important barrier to women’s professional advancement, and implications for intergenerational equity. Speaker: Joni Hersch, Professor of Law and Economics, Vanderbilt University

Gender differences in education choices are persistent, with females being much less likely to choose STEM fields than males. What, if any, is the role of gender differences in psychological attributes that have received a lot of attention in the behavioral/experimental literature, such a attitudes toward competition, in accounting for this gap? In this paper we show that competitiveness is predictive of education choices of students. Furthermore, gender differences in competitiveness account for roughly 20 percent of the gender gap in education choices. Speaker: Muriel Niederle, Professor of Economics, Stanford University

Despite rhetoric supporting the advancement of women on corporate boards, the evidence of any progress in the last decade is meager (outside countries with mandated gender quotas). Archival board data (approximately 5000 U.S. publicly traded firms) from the past decade (2002-2011) shows that the biggest predictor of whether or not a female is appointed to a corporate board is if a woman just left that board. If a man leaves a board there is a corresponding negative effect (though magnitude of this effect is lower). This “gender matching heuristic” was replicated in follow up lab studies, which also showed that although respondents are selecting candidates based on gender matching, they deny using gender as an important factor. We suggest this gender matching is a subconscious heuristic process stemming from the more general status-quo bias. Speaker: Cathy Tinsley, Professor of Management, Georgetown University

We examine whether women’s electoral success induces greater female political participation in subsequent elections using the regression discontinuity afforded by close elections between women and men, and constituency level data on India’s state elections from 1980-2007, We find that electoral victory for a woman leads to a large and significant increase in the share of female candidates from major political parties in the subsequent election. However, most of this is due to the increased propensity of previous candidates to run again; we do not find an increased entry of new female candidates and no change in female or male voter turnout. We construct a stylized model of political candidacy to investigate the mechanisms driving the increased share of female candidates. Our preliminary results suggest that a reduction in voter bias against women is the main mechanism, rather than an increase in the supply of potential women candidates or a reduction in party bias against women. Speaker: Lakshmi Iyer, Associate Professor and Marvin Bower Fellow, Harvard Business School

Data on 2,355 married women from the 2006 China

Health and Nutrition Survey are used to study how female employment

affects fertility in China. China has deep concerns with both population

size and female employment, so the relationship between the two should

be better understood. Causality flows in both directions. A conceptual

model shows how employment prospects affect fertility. Then an

instrumental variable isolates this effects. Female employment reduces a

married woman's preferred number of children by 0.35 on average and her

actual number by 0.50. Ramifications for China's one-child policy are

discussed. Speaker: Karen Eggleston, Director, Asia Health Policy

Program, Stanford University

Dasgupta’s research focuses on implicit bias and the self-concept, with special emphasis on ways in which societal expectations subtly shape individuals’ attitudes and behavior toward others and, in some cases, influence their own self-concept and life decisions. In her talk, she will highlight the impact of implicit stereotypes on individuals’ own academic and professional choices. She demonstrates that these choices are constrained by subtle expectations that signal who “naturally” belongs in a profession or academic field and is likely to succeed, and who seems like an unlikely fit. Dasgupta then asks the question -- what factors release these constraints and enhance individuals’ real freedom to pursue any academic and professional path purely based on ability not stereotypes? She addresses this question in two achievement domains: women and girls’ aspirations in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and women’s leadership aspirations in professions that are disproportionately male. Speaker: Nilanjana Dasgupta, Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts at Amherst

In Brazil and throughout the African diaspora rarely are black women, especially poor black women, considered leaders of social movements, much less political theorists. While black women are at the heart of the struggle for urban housing and land rights in Salvador, they are virtually ignored. The public image of black women, particularly those who live in poor neighborhoods, is that they lack the knowledge and political sophistication needed to organize social movements. This presentation explores how and why black women are the main ones interpreting the racial, gender, and class dynamics of urban-development policies and have radicalized local communities. Perry argues that Black women who organize as blacks, women, and poor people provide key insights on precisely how intersectionality is mobilized for social change. This talk bridges the scholarly gap between the black feminist theorization and the grassroots practice of intersectionality. Speaker: Keisha-Khan Perry, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies, Brown University

Low fertility countries in Europe and Asia have adopted new work-family reconciliation policies, with varied results.  Boling analyzes the politics of work-family reconciliation policies in three conservative welfare states, arguing that in this policy area, politics gets in the way of policy learning, making it difficult to borrow the “best practices” of other countries.  The reasons for this differ, but relate to policy histories and repertoires, political institutions, labor markets that exact high opportunity costs from mothers who spend time at home with children, and cultural expectations about good mothering. Speaker: Patricia Boling, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Purdue University