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Spring 2010
February 2010
2.4.10
Determinants of Risk Preferences
Anna Dreber, Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute for Financial Research (SIFR), and Fellow, WAPPP
Individuals vary to the extent that they are willing to take risk, with women and older individuals typically being more risk averse than men and younger individuals. This talk will focus on the association between biological variables and risk preferences. Dreber will discuss the role of hormones and specific genes in explaining individual variation in financial risk taking as well as other types of risk taking, including risk taking in the card game contract bridge. Anna Dreber is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Financial Research (SIFR) in Stockholm, Sweden, and a Fellow at WAPPP. Her research interests lie in the intersection of economics, biology and psychology, and focuses on biological and cultural determinants of individual differences in risk preferences and competitiveness.
2.11.10
Securitizing Sex: Towards a New Theory of the Utility of Wartime Rape
Megan MacKenzie, Lecturer of International Relations at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand and WAPPP Affiliate
This talk will explore dominant approaches to wartime rape and offer a new framework from which to consider why rape is used as a tool of war and why it has been a part of militant strategies through history. In particular, this talk will focus on the use of rape during the civil conflict in Sierra Leone and the relationship between the strategy of wartime rape and domestic law, including marriage and paternity laws. Furthermore, the “collateral damages” of rape, or the broader social and security implications of wartime rape are explored as a significant consideration for international politics and security studies.
2.18.10
Intersectionality, Public Health and Health Care Reform for Women: An Analysis of the Recent Debates
Ange-Marie Hancock, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Southern California (USC) College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
What does health care “reform” mean for women in the U.S. system? How might an intersectional approach to public health illuminate multiple paths to meaningful change in health care delivery? This talk will provide an initial foray into the recent public celebration of the Cleveland-Mayo Clinic models by President Obama and the implications for gendered analyses of public health care.
2.25.10
Baby Dolls, Superheroes, and Babysitting: Gender Issues and Challenges in Early Childhood Education
Sophia Pappas, Master in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School
Early childhood education as a professional field and programmatic delivery system is incredibly diverse. But walk into any early childhood classroom, administrative office, or government agency across the country and you will notice a quality shared by a significant portion of staff: they are women. Sophia Pappas will discuss the historical origins and implications of these gender dynamics for the prioritization and funding of early childhood education in the United States. She will also touch on the opportunities and limitations of challenging gender norms at the outset of a child’s formal education she experienced as a pre-Kindergarten teacher in Newark, New Jersey.
March 2010
3.4.10
Sanitary Technology in Nepal: Menstrual Cup Adoption and Effects on Education
Rebecca Thornton, Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Michigan
Rebecca Thornton is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Michigan. Dr. Thornton completed her Ph.D. in Political Economy and Government with a joint degree from the Harvard University Economics Department and the J.F. Kennedy School of Government in 2006. She was an NIA post-doc from 2006 to 2008 at the University of Michigan Population Studies Center. Her research focuses on health and education in developing countries using experimental research techniques. Dr. Thornton’s research has involved a number of field-experiments in Africa, South Asia, and Latin America that cover topics such as HIV prevention, women’s reproductive health including menstruation, primary education, and health insurance.
3.11.10
Shall I Stay or Shall I Go? Cooperative and Competitive Effects of Demography on Turnover
Kathleen L. McGinn, Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration and Senior Associate Dean, Director of Faculty Development at Harvard Business School
Kathleen L. McGinn is the Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration and Senior Associate Dean, Director of Faculty Development at Harvard Business School. Professor McGinn teaches courses on negotiations, power and influence, and interpersonal decision making to MBAs and Executives. Before coming to Harvard, Professor McGinn taught at Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management and Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management. She received her Ph.D. from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.
3.25.10
One of Us: Multilevel models examining the impact of descriptive representation on civic engagement
Pippa Norris, Paul. F. McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics, Harvard Kennedy School
Pippa Norris will discuss her paper which she co-authored with Mona Lena Krook, WAPPP Fellow 2008-2009. This paper examines the impact of descriptive representation in comparative perspective. The goals are to establish (1) whether descriptive representation mobilizes attitudinal and behavioral indicators of civic engagement; (2) whether the strength of any such relationship differs for women and young people; and (3) whether this relationship is evident cross-nationally. The paper concludes with a summary of the major findings and reflects upon their implications for understanding and altering long-standing inequalities in civic engagement.
April 2010
4.1.10
Gender in Decision Making and Negotiation Seminar
Barbara Annis, Barbara Annis & Associates Inc.
Within organizations and workplaces, each of us operates through a set of filters, seen and unseen, including that of gender. Like it or not, our gender-different styles play a major role in how we work together and perform as leaders. The fact is - organizations that truly commit to recognizing, honoring, and capitalizing on the differing strengths of men and women gain a significant competitive advantage. Annis will provide insightful, practical approaches to executive and managerial leadership that will demonstrate impact within organizational contexts.
4.8.10
Dignity and Dreams: The Social Psychological Benefits of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)
Jennifer Sykes, Doctoral Fellow in Sociology and Social Policy, Inequality and Social Policy Program, Harvard Kennedy School
Sykes will present the paper, “Dignity and Dreams: The Social Psychological Benefits of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)”. The paper explores what the EITC (a refundable federal income tax credit for low-income families and one of today’s most significant poverty-alleviation policies) means to the working poor and near poor. Building on interpretive sociological theories, we analyze 120 in-depth interviews with low-income working families in the Boston area to explore how EITC recipients perceive the refund and how they find meaning in their refund allocations. We show that EITC recipients derive significant positive social psychological benefits from receiving the refund. The EITC promotes recipients’ sense of dignity through “relief consumption,” “status consumption,” and “mobility consumption dreams.” We argue that these social psychological benefits of the EITC could have important policy implications if policy-makers linked these consumption types to concrete steps towards social mobility for recipients and their children.
4.15.10
Women Soldiers: History and Recent Experience
Joshua S. Goldstein, Professor Emeritus of International Relations, American University (Washington, DC); and Research Scholar, University of Massachusetts
Throughout history and across cultures, combatants in the world’s many wars have overwhelmingly been male. Why this is so has been an enduring puzzlor various academic disciplines. On the whole, the evidence shows that when given the chance women have performed quite well in combat. Currently, women soldiers, especially from the United States, are playing critical specialized roles in counterinsurgency wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. European militaries and peacekeeping missions have begun to use gender advisors to help adapt to new gender realities of warfare. This talk reviews women’s past and present experiences as war fighters.
4.22.10
Status, Class, and Creed: The Different Logics of Policy Change on Women’s Rights
Mala Htun, Associate Professor of Political Science, The New School for Social Research, Eugene Lang College
Professor Htun will discuss her paper “When and Why Do Governments Promote Gender Equality? Violence Against Women, Reproductive Rights, and Work-Family Issues in Cross-National Perspective.” This paper explores policies on violence against women, abortion, and parental leave across 71 countries. Based on a concept of gender as an institution, Professor Htun and her co-authors argue that these policies promoting gender equality challenge historical patterns of state-society interaction concerning the organization of the economy, the respective roles of the state, religion, and cultural groups, and the authority of the state to protect citizen rights. Different policies pose different challenges however gender equality is not one issue but many. Each policy involves a distinctive logic of change. The data analysis reveals that models explaining variation on violence against women do not apply to variation on abortion or parental leave, for example. The role of actors like women’s movements and religious organizations is different and the weight of contextual factors (such as degree of democracy or fertility) also varies.
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