Melani Cammett is Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs in the Government Department and Director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. Cammett's books include The Oxford Handbook of Politics in Muslim Societies (co-edited with Pauline Jones, Oxford University Press, 2022), Compassionate Communalism: Welfare and Sectarianism in Lebanon (Cornell University Press 2014), which won the American Political Science Association (APSA) Giovanni Sartori Book Award and the Honorable Mention for the APSA Gregory Luebbert Book Award; A Political Economy of the Middle East (co-authored with Ishac Diwan, Alan Richards, and John Waterbury, 2015); The Politics of Non-State Social Welfare in the Global South (co-edited with Lauren Morris MacLean, Cornell University Press 2014), which received the Honorable Mention for the ARNOVA book award; and Globalization and Business Politics in North Africa (Cambridge University Press 2007). Her research explores identity politics, development, migration, and authoritarianism in the Middle East and other contexts. She is currently working on a book project, Toleration, which explores how people live together after violence, focusing on Bosnia-Herzegovina, Lebanon, and Northern Ireland.
Co-sponsored by the Middle Eastern Studies Program, the Department of Government, the Political Economy Project, and the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding.
Made possible by the E.M. Skowrup 1937 Fund.
The languages we speak shape our thoughts in subtle, subconscious ways. There are demonstrated links between language and gender roles, and differences in language structure influence our economic behavior. Dr. Jakiela will describe a new data set characterizing the grammatical gender structure of over 4,000 languages. Using this data set, she shows that women whose native language partitions nouns into masculine and feminine are less educated and less likely to participate in the labor force – a pattern that is apparent both across and within countries.
Pamela Jakiela is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, where she studies gender issues, behavioral development economics, survey design and measurement, and impact evaluation. Her work has been published in leading academic journals including Science and the Review of Economic Studies, and has been featured in media outlets including the New York Times and NPR. Her current work includes research on women's labor force participation and occupational choice, the gender dynamics of investments in early childhood, and the impacts of cash grants on subsistence entrepreneurs.
Sam Asher, Economist, Development Research Group (DECRG) at the World Bank, Associate, Center for International Development (Harvard University) and an affiliate at the Centre for Policy Research (New Delhi).
The majority of people in extreme poverty live in rural areas in developing countries. For decades, policymakers have focused on alleviating rural poverty by generating rural growth. This talk will combine evidence from the existing literature and research that I have conducted with Paul Novosad to question whether major investments in rural areas can generate meaningful economic growth or poverty alleviation in those areas.
Sponsored by the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding and the Economics Department. Made possible by the E. M. Skowrup 1937 Fund.