Month: April 2014

Insert joke here about Boston accents…

It’s been a crazy spring. Weather-wise, life plans-wise, travel-wise, just kind of nuts all around. I realize much of this is self-induced craziness. I’m the one looking for a job. I’m the one who jets off to Portugal for the weekend. I’m the one who can’t sit still.

It seems, though, that I might have found something to help calm the waters of a few of those things, and perhaps stir up some others. I’m excited to announce that I have accepted a position as a postdoctoral researcher at Evidence for Policy Design, a group within Harvard Kennedy School‘s Center for International Development. I will be working with Rohini Pande and Erica Field, spending some time in India, and working on several really cool research projects pertaining to women’s labor force participation, banking, the environment, and policy making in India. It’s an opportunity to continue my own research on gender, violence and discrimination in the developing world, to get some experience in the field, and to work with and around a large group of incredibly smart people doing awesome research on gender, development, and related fascinating topics.

I’m absolutely over the moon excited. I will be learning from the very best and there is likely no job that better fits my interests and skills.

I will be very sad to leave Lafayette College. The students here are wonderful. My colleagues here are phenomenal. They have become fantastic friends, mentors, coauthors, yoga buddies, running partners, cycling partners, and so much more in a very short time. I don’t imagine that those things will change; I know how to make sure I’m not forgotten. (mwahahaha).

I’m also grateful for the outpouring of congratulations and support I’ve already received from friends, family, and colleagues. I feel so fortunate to have all of you in my life. The best responses I’ve gotten so far have been from my dad and the woman who cleans the room I teach in at 8am. My dad said, “buy a plane ticket home and we’ll drink the ’82 Mouton!” (I didn’t, for the record). The woman who cleans my classroom said, “Congratulations! When are you moving to Connecticut?” A wonderful, subtle reminder that Cambridge is not the center of everyone’s universe, even if it’s about to become mine.

The Grand Gender Convergence

The American Economic Review was sitting in my mailbox this morning. Yes, I do realize I’m pretty much the last economist on earth to still receive hard copy journals, but don’t knock it ’til you try it.

Claudia Goldin writes the lead article from the April issue. It’s titled A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter. The abstract is below.

The converging roles of men and women are among the grandest advances in society and the economy in the last century. These aspects of the grand gender convergence are figurative chapters in a history of gender roles. But what must the “last” chapter contain for there to be equality in the labor market? The answer may come as a surprise. The solution does not (necessarily) have to involve government intervention and it need not make men more responsible in the home (although that wouldn’t hurt). But it must involve changes in the labor market, in particular how jobs are structured and remunerated to enhance temporal flexibility. The gender gap in pay would be considerably reduced and might vanish altogether if firms did not have an incentive to disproportionately reward individuals who labored long hours and worked particular hours. Such change has taken off in various sectors, such as technology, science and health, but is less apparent in the corporate, financial and legal worlds.

Given the nature of the debate over the past few months on equal pay legislation and other forms of labor market discrimination against women, and more importantly against individuals that don’t conform to the two-gender paradigm, to claim that the gender convergence is in its last chapter seems a little short-sighted. But she’s a historian and a very smart economic historian at that, having written a book, Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women, which I recommend frequently to economics majors interested in labor and gender. The article is essentially an extension of the book’s arguments, this time concentrating on occupational differences.

It’s a good read and would be great for students. In fact, perhaps I’ll have mine read it this week. Look out for their tweets!