Returns to women’s education using optimal IV selection

This paper investigates returns to women’s education by applying an optimal IV selection approach, post-Lasso IV estimation, which improves the first-stage predictive relationship between an endogenous regressor and instruments. Using the 2010 American Community Survey, we find that an extra year of education increases married women’s own income by $4,480 and spouse income by $8,822. Our findings indicate that 53% of the increase in women’s consumption by education is attributed to the marriage market, and thus, we conclude that the marriage market is the primary channel through which education improves women’s well-being. The results demonstrate the advantages of the post-Lasso approach: The resulting two-stage least squares estimator maintains efficiency without increasing finite sample bias and is less subject to the inconsistency problem when some instruments are invalid; This differs from the results using the instrument of birth quarters only, which is mostly applied in studies on returns to education.     

Does microfinance empower women? Evidence from self‐help groups in India

Microfinance programmes like the Self Help Bank Linkage Program in India have been increasingly promoted for their positive economic impact and the belief that they empower women. However, only a few studies rigorously examine the link between microfinance and women’s empowerment. This article contributes to this discussion by arguing that women’s empowerment takes place when women challenge the existing social norms and culture, to effectively improve their well‐being. It empirically validates this hypothesis by using quasi‐experimental household sample data collected for five states in India for 2000 and 2003. A general model is estimated by employing appropriate techniques to treat the ordinal variables in order to estimate the impact of the Self Help Group (SHG) on women’s empowerment for 2000 and 2003. The results strongly demonstrate that on average, there is a significant increase in the empowerment of women in the SHG members group. No such significant change is observed however, for the members of the control group. The elegance of the result lies in the fact that the group of SHG participants show clear evidence of a significant and higher empowerment, while allowing for the possibility that some members might have been more empowered than others.     

80年代以来中日妇女生育观变化比较研究——以北京和东京为例

试图从历史研究的方法出发,以北京和东京妇女的婚姻观念和生育观念变化为例,比较80年代以来中日妇女生育观念变化的同一性与差异性,探索产生差异的不同社会制度、经济发展程度,以及关于妇女社会作用的不同观念及不同的社会心理影响。     

基本养老保险制度下女性养老金水平研究——兼析养老金性别差异

基本养老保险制度运行10多年来,在提供退休保障方面发挥了重要的积极作用。但女性养老金问题值得高度重视。其中,女性退休年龄是影响养老金水平的重要因素,还带来了养老金性别差异。女性退休年龄已经与政策目标以及预期寿命不符,对既不利于保障退休生活,也不利于制度的健康持续发展。从国际比较看,我国女性退休年龄低于国际及亚太地区平均水平,而养老金替代率的性别差异也明显大于国际水平。因此,应在统筹考虑我国养老金体系建设的前提下,抓紧研究论证提高退休年龄,特别是先行逐步提高女性退休年龄的方式方法。     

Let Their Voices Be Seen: Exploring Mental Mapping as a Feminist Visual Methodology for the Study of Migrant Women

This article explores how mental mapping can be used as a critical methodology for feminist migration studies. In a case study of female marriage migrants who settle in rural areas in South Korea from other Asian countries, I attempt to develop mental mapping to supplement verbal interviews. Mental maps of hometowns and current neighborhoods drawn by my interviewees represent their geographical imaginations and complex identity negotiations that mirror the change in their social locations. In order to understand multilayered meanings embedded in the images and the way in which power relations existent between the researcher and the researched affect the map production, I suggest a critical reading of the maps. The article shows how a reflexive and intertextual reading makes a difference to the interpretation of the maps. It argues that the maps are not mere reflections of the women's cognition, but rather socially constructed texts through which their desires, emotions, feelings and internal contradictions are expressed and negotiated. My research suggests that mental mapping, if ethically performed and critically evaluated, has potential as a means to convey the unheard voices of the marginalized to diverse audiences.     

Conceptualizing Family Violence as a Workplace Issue: A Framework for Research and Practice

Until recently, violence in the home has been regarded as a private family matter. Employees who are victims of abuse at home have been expected to put their experience of abuse behind them when they go to work, and employers have not been expected to interfere. Yet, the consequences of disregarding family violence as an organizational issue may be quite severe. This article suggests that family violence can affect the career advancement of individual victims; their performance at work; relationships with co-workers, supervisors, and customers; and, ultimately, organizational effectiveness. Moreover, this article argues that organizations have a social responsibility to contribute to the elimination of family violence by creating a workplace environment in which violence is not tolerated, abused victims are provided with support and assistance, and strategies for equalizing power relationships between men and women are implemented. Implications for future research as well as for organizational policy and practice are explored.     

The Gender Contract under Neoliberalism: Palestinian-Israeli Women's Labor Force Participation

This paper interprets the pressure to raise Palestinian-Israeli women’s labor force participation within the unfolding neoliberal project in Israel, arguing that women’s stalled workforce integration reflects embedded economic rationality. Poor infrastructure and discriminatory policies, combined with Israel’s rapid economic privatization, set contradictory expectations for Palestinian-Israeli women: their opportunity-cost calculations include entitlements to economic protection alongside obligations to provide expenditure-saving domestic labor. Yet growing pressure and desire to join the paid workforce suggest that the gender contract may be changing. This cultural schema, which links women’s economic strategizing to their sense of feminine propriety, is transforming as part of a broader transition to a market-led gender regime, with the paradoxical effect of encouraging women’s employment while simultaneously impoverishing them. By dwelling on the dialectics of culture and the structure of work opportunities, and women’s agency, this paper aims to resolves an impasse in the current debate on women’s low workforce participation.     

Factors influencing women's decision to leave an organization following childbirth

The purpose of this study was to understand the reasons why college-educated women leave organizations after childbirth. Results from 228 women who participated in a study of intention to work following childbirth indicated specific work and family factors that differentiated mothers who returned to work from mothers who stayed home after childbirth. Comparisons were also made between women who had a child and those who anticipated having a child. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for organizational policy makers.     

Where has all the gender gone?

What questions should economists be asking when looking at how markets affect women? This comment expands on a debate begun on Femecon-l and continued in the “Debating Markets” article.