Does language shape our economy? Female/male grammatical distinctions and gender economics.
Résumé
Gender discrimination varies vastly across nations – an outcome that most would ascribe at least partly to culture. If culture is transmitted via language, as Douglass North asserts, grammar difference should line up with gender discrimination. This column presents new empirical evidence that gender distinctions in language are strongly correlated with female labour-force participation and the use of gender political quotas.
Blog article about Santacreu-Vasut, Shoham, and Gay (2013). "Do Female/Male Distinctions in Language Matter? Evidence from Gender Political Quotas." Applied Economics Letters, 20(5), 495-8. Available at: https://voxeu.org/article/language-matters-gender-grammar-and-observed-gender-discrimination.
