Understanding Culture and Women's Work

Jessica Carges

Advisor: Virgil Storr, PhD, Department of Economics

Committee Members: Stefanie Haeffele, Peter Boettke

Buchanan Hall, #D180
April 11, 2024, 11:00 AM to 01:00 PM

Abstract:

This dissertation aims to understand how culture impacts women’s decisions regarding work. Drawing from the fields of economic sociology and Austrian economics, each essay seeks to further our understanding of the role informal norms, social relations, and language play in shaping economic behavior.

The first chapter, coauthored with Stefanie Haeffele, explores the historical, cultural, and social context of Cuba from 1960 to 1980, when a top-down approach was employed to increase female labor force participation. Using interviews and ethnographic research from Cuban women during this timeframe, collected from multiple archives, this essay assesses the effectiveness of state-driven interventions within a specific cultural environment. We then compare these efforts to the bottom-up women’s liberation movement in the United States, drawing on surveys and interviews from Cuban American women during the same timeframe. We find that in Cuba, the policies implemented by the government were often at odds with prevailing cultural and social norms. Because of this, both men and women were resistant to the changes being pushed by the government. Female labor force participation rates did rise, but most women remained working within the home. In the United States, laws aimed at preventing discrimination based on gender were enacted after cultural and social norms had begun to shift. The bottom-up nature of the women’s liberation movement in the United States allowed for more freedom and flexibility in how liberation was defined for each individual. The top-down nature of women’s liberation in Cuba meant that only one definition of liberation for women existed, which characterized liberation as the obligation for women to work in productive labor outside the home. Women were not given the freedom of choice or agency over how they wanted to live their lives. Rather, a specific vision of women’s liberation was set by the government and targeted policies were implemented to achieve this vision. The case studies and interviews described throughout illuminate the tensions that exist between Cuban women’s interpretation of liberation and how it was defined and enforced by the communist government.

Chapter two, coauthored with Stefanie Haeffele, shifts the focus to contemporary society and examines why women dominate the social media influencer market. People of influence, able to sway the purchasing habits of others, have always existed. From royal families and celebrities to your well-to-do neighbor, the glamorous and charismatic among us have shaped how others aspire to live. An influencer is someone with a strong relationship to an audience who can heavily sway decisions like purchasing habits, and the most common platforms for developing an audience today are through online social media sites. Influencers are users of these platforms who can persuade others by virtue of their trustworthiness and authenticity. We first examine the role that social media influencers play in the market and how they generate income through a Smithian and Kirznerian framework. We then consider why women are particularly drawn to this field, as around 80 percent of social media influencers identify as women. We assess several explanations, including the remote nature of the work which allows for flexible hours and flexible location; the ability to seamlessly transition from full to part time work without large pay penalties; and the viability for stay-at-home moms, caretakers of the elderly, and students to actively participate without sacrificing other obligations. A unique feature of this market is that having children can increase your profit margins. Content featuring children not only increases engagement, which increases the amount of money an influencer can earn per post, but children also open access to new markets. As employee demand for flexibility grows, women often choose occupations because they offer flexibility without penalty. Influencer marketing is one such occupation.

Chapter three surveys scholarly work in the field of Austrian economics from both historical and contemporary sources to assess the importance of language in shaping our understanding of the world, and in shaping the decisions we make and the actions we take. Hayek (1968) describes how evolved terms in our language can have real-world consequences. This essay examines how different languages evolved with different grammatical rules. Gendered languages are a classification of language that attaches a specific gender to most nouns, in addition to gendered pronouns. Given that our thinking is affected by language, I hypothesize that this attention to gender can have negative consequences for women—especially when careers and job titles are gendered. For Hayek, the words we use and the meanings we give to them influence how we think about the political system. My analysis shows the importance of language in how we understand the world, and how grammatical differences in gender can influence women’s decisions regarding work.