Date/Time
Date(s) - 30/01/2025
3:30 pm - 5:00 pm

Join us at the end of the month for our 2025 Graham Memorial Lecture, jointly with the School of Labour Studies! This year we have Heather Sarsons joining us from Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia.

Heather’s research interests are in labour, behavioural, and social economics with a particular interest in understanding gender inequality and discrimination.

Her talk is titled, “Measuring Gender Attitudes and their Economic Implications”.

Abstract

Gender attitudes and norms have been shown to affect gender inequality across many domains, such as work, health, and politics. When we measure gender attitudes, though, we typically focus on the attitudes that women face. For example, surveys ask respondents whether they believe that children will suffer if their mother works or whether women are too emotional for politics. Far less attention has been paid to the attitudes that constrain men’s behaviour. This talk will present results from three papers that seek to understand the norms and attitudes that men face, and how these attitudes affect both men’s and women’s well-being. We first show that standard survey questions do not adequately capture individuals’ views regarding gender equality. We then establish a set of new survey questions to measure the attitudes that both women and men face. Finally, we show that developing proper measures of gender attitudes can help explain inequality between men and women both within and across households.

Join us Thursday, January 30 at 3:30, Council Chambers, Gilmour Hall 111.

Please register here to ensure seating.

Following the lecture you are welcome to stay for the reception, to mingle with guests and enjoy light refreshments.

You can view Heather’s professional website here.