Working Paper: NBER ID: w29481
Authors: Rohini Pande; Helena Roy
Abstract: Alfred Marshall and Mary Paley Marshall are often described as the first academic economist couple. Both studied at Cambridge University, where Paley became one of the first women to take the Tripos exam and the first female lecturer in economics, with Marshall’s encouragement. But in later life, Marshall opposed granting Cambridge degrees to women and their participation in academic economics. This paper recounts Alfred Marshall’s use of gender norms, born out of a separate spheres ideology, to promote and ingrain women’s exclusion in academic economics and beyond. We demonstrate the persistence of this ideology and resultant norms, drawing parallels between gendered inequities in labor market outcomes for Cambridge graduates in the UK post-Industrial Revolution and those apparent in cross-country data today. We argue that the persistence of the norms produced by separate spheres ideologies is likely to reflect, at least in part, the rents associated with preferential access to better paid, high-skilled labor market opportunities. In doing so, we ask who benefits from gender norms, who enforces them, and suggest relevant policy work and areas for future research.
Keywords: No keywords provided
JEL Codes: A10; B13; J16; J70
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Alfred Marshall's opposition to women's education (B13) | exclusion of women from academic economics (J16) |
| gender norms (J16) | economic rents benefiting men (D33) |
| gender norms (J16) | structure of labor markets and educational opportunities (J40) |
| gender norms (J16) | misallocation of talent (D29) |
| exclusion of women from academic economics (J16) | gendered inequities in labor market outcomes (J70) |