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Posts Tagged ‘Gender’

Print, Persuade and Post

My coauthor (and 16-year-old daughter) Antonia Ayres-Brown just published a piece in Slate about a project that started 5 years ago when we bleg’d Freakonomics readers to tell us about how McDonald’s refers to Happy Meal toys. Antonia was disturbed by the kinds of questions we encountered when we ordered Happy Meals at the drive-thru. We’d be asked things like “Is it for a boy or girl?” or “Do you want a girl’s toy or a boy’s toy?”

I asked readers whether they encountered similar questions.  According to seventy nine reader responses, approximately one-fifth of the time McDonald’s employees did not ask a toy-related question.  But when employees did ask a toy-related question:

47.7%                    Asked “Is It for a Boy or Girl?”

31.8%                    Asked “Do You Want A Boy’s Toy or a Girl’s Toy?”

15.9%                    Described the toys in non-gender terms.

I’ve waited this long to report the results because Antonia have I have been engaged in a long-term project to encourage McDonald’s to describe the toys without reference to children’s gender.


A Good Instrument Is Hard to Find

Phoebe Clarke recently posted a Deadspin article about an article that we just published in The Journal of Socio-Economics. The article, “The Chastain Effect: Using Title IX to Measure the Causal Effect of Participating in High School Sports on Adult Women’s Social Lives,” adopts an ingenious methodology pioneered by Betsey Stevenson (whose research is frequently featured here) in her 2010 study “Beyond the Classroom: Using Title IX to Measure the Return to High School Sports.” Stevenson estimates the effects of participating in high school sports on women’s economic lives, and finds that sports participation leads women to attain higher levels of education and earn more. I apply the same methodology to social outcomes, and find that sports participation causes women to be less religious, more likely to have children, and, if they do have children, more likely to be single mothers.


Women as "Vessels of Reproduction"

These aren’t my words. Listen to John R. Beard, who runs the Department of Ageing and Life Course for the World Health Organization:

“To some extent, we treat women as vessels of reproduction, and once they’ve done that we don’t pay much attention to them.”

That’s from Don McNeil‘s Times article about women’s life expectancy:

Life expectancy for women who live to age 50 is going up around the world, but poor and middle-income countries could easily make greater gains, according to a new World Health Organization report.

Heart disease, stroke and cancer kill most women over 50, said Dr. John R. Beard, director of the W.H.O.’s department of aging, so countries should focus on lowering blood pressure with inexpensive drugs and screening for cervical and breast cancer. Those diseases can be prevented or treated, said Dr. Beard, who was also an author of the study, which was published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.

Related (if barely): Ronald Coase has died at age 102.


What's the Best Way to "Sponsor" Baby Girls?

A reader named Gunjan Aggarwal writes:

I came to the U.S. 7 years ago, worked in U.K./Switzerland/Netherlands/India prior to that. I work in human resources and have been fortunate to have been successful thus far in my career. We are moving on to a new location and a new job this year but this year will also perhaps give me an opportunity to invest some time/leadership on a cause that I have been very keen to “do something about”: contribute towards improving the lot of the girl child in India.
 
I have always thought of crowd-sourcing an incentive scheme by which we will “adopt” a few girls in their womb and give the parents a small amount every month, $50, to give birth to their girl child, to educate her till the age of 21. I was even more determined to do this in the wake of all the news about crimes against women in India — but then I heard your podcast on the “Cobra Effect.”

I would love to connect and get your thoughts on “scheming” this incentive forward!


Macho, Macho Men

New research (summarized in the BPS Research Digest) from psychologists Jonathan Weaver, Joseph Vandello, and Jennifer Bosson indicates that men whose masculinity is threatened become “myopic and more prone to take risks.” Here’s the abstract:

Among the conjectured causes of the recent U.S. financial crisis is the hyper-masculine culture of Wall Street that promotes extreme risk-taking. In two experiments, we found that threats to their manhood motivated men to take greater financial risks and favor immediate (vs. delayed) fiscal rewards. In Experiment 1, men placed larger bets during a gambling game after a gender threat as compared to men in an affirmation condition. In Experiment 2, after a gender threat, men pursued an immediate financial payoff rather than waiting for interest to accrue, but only if they believed their decision was public. When the decision was private, gender-threatened men did not show the same desire for immediate reward. These results suggest that gender threats may shift men’s financial decisions toward more risky and short-sighted public choices.


College Football Victories = Worse Grades?

Yes, at least for guys. That’s according to a new study (abstract; PDF) by University of Oregon economists Jason M. Lindo, Isaac D. Swensen, and Glen R. Waddell. Drawing on 8 years of data from nearly 30,000 Oregon students, they found that three fewer Ducks’ wins per season would increase male students’ GPA scores by roughly .02 — a relatively minor effect, truth be told, considering that three extra wins in college football is the difference between a good team and a bad one.

The authors attribute the grade drop to an increase in partying and alcohol consumption when the team wins, paired with a decrease in studying. Women also tend to drink and party more when the Ducks win, but the GPA effect wasn’t nearly as strong. So if you’re the parent of an Oregon student, you might be rooting for the Ducks to lose a little more often than they do.


Nice Guys Never Win (Neither Do Mean Girls)

For years, we’ve been hearing from fictional alpha males like Ari Gold and Gordon Gekko that nice guys finish last. Now, according to a collection of studies soon to be released in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, there appears to be some truth to the axiom. While nice guys don’t necessarily finish last, they rarely finish first. Researchers Beth A. Livingston of Cornell, Timothy A. Judge of Notre Dame, and Charlice Hurst of the University of Western Ontario, show how “agreeableness” negatively affects monetary earnings. Moreover, their research shows that this “agreeable gap” is more pronounced in men than women, who still trail their male counterparts. Here’s a full version of the study. And here’s the abstract:


The Neuroscience Behind Sexual Desire: Bring Your Questions for Authors of A Billion Wicked Thoughts

The first researcher to systematically investigate human sexual desire was the Indiana University sociologist Alfred Kinsey, more than 60 years ago. Kinsey spent years surveying people’s sexual habits, interviewing thousands of middle-class Americans in the 1940s and ’50s. But what if all that information had been publicly available? What if you could access the secret sexual behaviors of more than 100 million men and women from around the world?
Today, thanks to the internet, you can.
In what is claimed to be the largest experiment ever, two neuroscience PhDs from Boston University, Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam, analyzed a billion web searches, a million web sites, a million erotic videos, millions of personal ads, thousands of digital romance novels, and combined it all with cutting-edge neuroscience.


India's Worsening Gender Imbalance

We’ve written a lot about gender on this blog, and the preference for boys over girls has been a hallmark of Asian societies for centuries. This has led to large gender imbalances across much of Asia, particularly in China and India. In China, there are 119 boys born for every 100 girls. According to India’s recently completed census, among children six and under, there are only 914 girls counted for every 1,000 boys.


Building Gender Stereotypes

There’s a particular kind of story one reads occasionally, making fun of the worst excesses of political correctness. But this entry is about the other extreme-a toy manufacturer so far in the dark ages that even Don Draper might snicker.


Aggression and Accidents

Last post, I presented research showing that men are more deadly than women when behind the wheel. Researchers presume this is because men have a predisposition toward aggression and thrill-seeking, thanks to the testosterone that helped our male ancestors stalk, struggle and seduce their way to successful gene replication.


Why You'd Rather Ride With a Woman Than a Man

Last post, I passed on some data showing that women are somewhat more likely than men to be involved in car accidents on a per mile driven basis. But men are far more likely (by between 50 and 100 percent) to be in crashes involving loss of life. Why are men’s crashes so much more tragic?


A Reversal of the "Missing Women" Phenomenon?

In at least one Asian country, however, there’s reason to believe the missing women phenomenon may someday disappear. South Korean parents, who have historically preferred sons, are now more likely to express a preference for daughters.


Who Drives Better, Men or Women?

We’ve established that men are more likely to take the wheel when a couple rides together, but should we care? I say we should. Aside from the cultural, sociological and psychological implications, the gender driving disparity might be costing us lives and treasure. If women are more skilled drivers than men, perhaps we’d all be better off if they were behind the wheel and men were in the passenger seat knitting.


Could Women Have Prevented a Financial Crisis?

The economist Anne Sibert hypothesizes that gender inequality in the finance industry is partly to blame for the financial crisis. She points to evidence that men are less risk-averse in financial decision-making, more overconfident, and perhaps susceptible to testosterone-fueled feedback loops in asset bubbles.


Our Daily Bleg: Happy Meal Toys

Photo: flavouz Here’s a bleg asking what happened the last time you ordered a Happy Meal at McDonald’s. I’m particularly interested in whether you were asked a toy question and how it was framed. Here in Connecticut, when I drive through, I’m sometimes asked whether the toy is for a boy or a girl. Sometimes they ask “Do you want . . .


And Fry It Up in a Pan

It’s social change alright: 26 percent of working wives out-earned their working husbands in 2006, up by nearly half from 20 years ago.
Now that many more women are graduating college than men, higher-earning wives are going to become the new normal.


Why Does So Much Hate Mail Come From Men?

I’m sure that most academics are used to the following: Occasionally I write a scientific paper, an OpEd, or a blog entry in which I wade into some controversy or another, and in the ensuing few days receive some fairly vitriolic messages in my personal inbox. I’m not objecting — after all, it seems that I’ve had my chance to . . .


The “Ladies” Event at the World Series of Poker

Many people know about the World Series of Poker from the television coverage on ESPN. Mostly they just show the “Main Event” on TV. Hoa Nguyen from worldseriesofpoker.com. The main event has a $10,000 buy-in and lasts for two weeks. Leading up to the main event, there are dozens of other tournaments, some of which are going on right now. . . .


What’s Behind the Gender Gap in Education?

Girls have a built-in neurological advantage over boys when it comes to language skills, according to new research from Northwestern University and the University of Haifa. The researchers found that while girls can easily process language in the abstract, boys depend more on their senses. The upshot is that boys may need to be taught both visually and verbally, while . . .


The FREAK-est Links

The gender-swapping trend in online gaming. New software fights fraud on gambling sites. (Earlier) Atlanta man builds robot to chase away drug dealers. (Earlier) Doctors don’t get enough sleep for optimal functioning.


Are Men Really More Competitive Than Women?

The conventional wisdom holds that men and women have different abilities when it comes to competition (a view that’s certainly being challenged in the current Democratic primary). Labels like “lacking the killer instinct,” “peacemaker,” and “avoiding confrontation” are commonly assigned to women in competitive environments, while the supposed male knack for thriving in competition is cited as a reason for . . .


The History and Economics of the Family: A Guest Post

When I tell my non-economist friends that I do research on the “economics of the family,” they often look puzzled. (The funniest response comes from those who think that this is the same as “home economics“; as Betsey Stevenson will tell you, I surely would have failed home ec.) But Tim Harford is a lifesaver, and his new book provides . . .


Is ‘Stop Liking Men Who Drive Hot Cars’ Sound Climate Advice?

Richard Gray at the U.K. Telegraph reports that Sir David King, a University of Cambridge chemist, staunch global warming activist, and one of Britain’s top government scientists, gave the following advice to a woman who asked him what she could do to curb global warming: “[S]top admiring young men in Ferraris.” King’s larger point — that we should act individually . . .


The FREAK-est Links

Are men inherently better at math & science than women? (HT: Odd Numbers) Strange food tattoo fails to save owner’s restaurant. Working the night shift linked to cancer. (Earlier) New prediction market focuses on software products. (Earlier)


How Is a Ginkgo Tree Like a Discarded Computer?

This time of year in New York City, it’s easy to find elderly Chinese women in Central Park stooped beneath trees, gathering up what look like small plums. The trees are ginkgo trees, which drop their fruit when ripe; the fruit has long been prized in China and Japan as both a food and a medicine. A helpful friend tells . . .


The FREAK-est Links

The “Great American Smokeout” hits its 31st year. (Earlier) Can ignorance lead to greater wisdom? (HT: BPS Blog) Advice for getting off catalog lists. (Earlier) Australian Santas barred from saying “Ho Ho Ho”.