1. Shakeup at the Minneapolis Fed. Turns out economists can't resolve their differences either.

2. Peeta Mellark, the feminist.  Unpredictably, I love the challenges of typical gender roles in this film. But full disclosure: I'm on a complete Hunger Games binge at present. The second movie was amazing.

3. Do Mark Dayton's policies promote job growth in Minnesota? While I agree with many of Dayton's progressive policies, drawing the distinction between Wisconsin and Minnesota economies only based on three years of state leadership is audacious. Ceteris paribus? Not even close.

Hat tips: LANS, DW, Mom.
 

The next two weeks will be my first couple of weeks staying under the same roof since January. Apparently, all this staying in one location has slipped blogging to the back of the priorities list. That's my pathetic excuse. 

Anyway, I attended AAEA in DC back in early August, presenting a poster about the factors that predict independent financial decisions by women in rural Tanzania (more to come). Sendhil Mullainathan was an excellent keynote speaker and proposed some creative answers to tough questions.

Why do the poor so often miss deadlines for public benefits? Why do dieters struggle so much with temptation? Why does socioeconomic status play such a huge role on education test scores?

Mullainathan relates all these things to brain bandwidth, proposing the (not so ground-breaking, actually) idea that in the face of scarcity, our processing is distracted and slower. The provocative examples in his talk makes his upcoming book enticing. Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much.

Couldn't get a video of his dynamic presentation at the conference, but since TED talks have made presentations cool again, here's a good one from 2010.

The second chapter of Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg begins with an example of a high-level meeting with representatives from the Treasury Department and executives across Silicon Valley where the small group of women took seats in chairs off to the side of the room instead of at the main conference table. The title of the chapter is, coincidentally, "Sit at the Table."

Because I am historically vigilant in my life-is-gendered observations, I was so relieved to have someone other than me point this out. When I worked at the RAND, I was part of several client meetings that were run by my male colleagues although the principal investigator on the project was a female. My macroeconomic theory class at the University of Minnesota (in the non-applied economics department at the university, where the faculty is 8% female), the class was about 60 people, 1/5th of whom were female (applied econ and econ combined). In this competitive yet fairly interactive class, aside from me, only one other woman spoke up once in class the entire semester.

So for me, it was extremely encouraging to read Sandberg's review of academic studies and corporate examples that support what I feel like I've already seen in my hyper-observant feminist life. The Heidi and Howard study experiment heightens what appears to me to be a subtle yet consistent stress for women on the importance of likeability over the importance of success. Here's how the story goes.

Colombia Business School ran an experiment to test perceptions of men and women in the workplace describing a successful venture capitalist with "outgoing personality and vast personal and professional network including powerful business leaders in the technology sector." The professors tested the impact of the name Heidi or Howard on perceptions of this individual. Students rated Heidi and Howard as equally competent, yet Howard came across as a more appealing colleague. Heidi on the other hand was seen as selfish and "not the type of person you would want to hire or work for."

I think the results of this study, among the others reviewed in the book are important to keep in mind in order to purposely overcome our subconscious perceptions of gender.  I push the line by calling into question whether gender stereotypes played a role whenever I hear criticisms of individuals being unpleasantly ambitious or confident (and bless my friends for patiently explaining themselves every time). However, Sandberg points out that it does take intentional effort to overcome ingrained perceptions of gender roles, to criticize the "Having it all" working mom stereotype as harried and guild ridden and to laugh at the ridiculousness of Sad White Babies with Mean Feminist Mommies.

We can also appreciate the fluency with which Sandberg puts feminism back into the public conversation. She admits that in the past, "we accepted the negative caricature of bra-burning humorless, man-hating feminist and... and in sad irony, reject[ed] feminism to get male attention and approval. In our defense, my friends and I truly, if naively, believed that the world did not need feminists anymore." I think this is an incredibly common perspective and I hope that this book will put a cheery successful new face on the shoulders of feminism.  And although she does acknowledge the difficulty of discussing gender without appearing overly defensive, Sandberg's openness to proudly calling herself a feminist and the public dialogue in response to the book have begun to bring gender back on the table.

Frankly, the work-family balance is something extremely important to talk about. I read I Don't Know How She Does It when I was a nineteen year old math major, and had a serious discussion with my Calculus study buddy about how we felt more pressure to think about families in our male dominated department (this friend is now also interestingly pursuing a PhD in Economics).

The book does come from an outwardly privileged perspective (we can't all hire nannies) and has the occasional shortcomings as a feminist (breastfeeding is actually not frightening). And while I am in favor of inclusive definitions of feminism, the emphasis on dedicating oneself to her career does seem to simplify movement. Kate Losse at Dissent Magazine criticizes the obvious corporate benefit of a movement of leaning in.

However, when it comes down to it, Sandberg hits the nail on the head: the reason there aren't more women in leadership positions is because there aren't more women in leadership positions. While it is true that institutions and the structure of the workplace impose obstacles for women in academia, executive roles, legislature, corporations and coaching soccer teams, Sandberg proposes that institutional changes will come more fluidly when women are themselves in leadership positions. As uncomfortable as it is to admit to, I think she's right that we need to step up to the game ourselves:

We hold ourselves back in ways both big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in. We internalize messages that it's wrong to be outspoken, aggressive, more powerful than men.

We move closer to the goal of true equality when more women throw off the stereotypes of being pleasant and submissive ourselves, by applying for promotions, raising our hand, asking for raises and advocating for ourselves at work and in life.

Hat tips: KSM, CBT, JCH

More from Wainaina in One Day I Will Write About This Place:

Now, soccer itself is not a negotiable object. Democracy is, treasuries are, French government loans and grants, the lives of all citizens, the wombs of all women- all these things can bend comfortably to the will of the first family, but the fates of the national soccer team belong to the people. Nobody has ever successfully banned the playing of soccer in Africa.

And on that note, an ambitious and inspirational girls soccer academy in Nairobi's biggest slum.  It turns out that the school's American development director is another mwanafunzi baya struggling with me through the second semester of "Beginning" Swahili.