At the New Directions in Development conference on March 4th, hosted by the Development Research Institute, Prof. Raquel Fernandez presented a talk entitled “Culture Matters,” or "Women, Work, and Culture." During her short presentation, Prof. Fernandez described studying women's work preferences by isolating culture from the institutional and economic environment. She studied women’s workforce participation in the US as compared to the home country in second-generation immigrants.
Prof. Fernandez found that workforce participation for 2nd generation women in the US was effected by the cultural preferences from their home country. However, she ended with several provoking questions: why does culture differ across space and social groups? What does culture change? How do culture and institutions interact?
I found this presentation to be very interesting in context of what we have read in our class, particularly Fisman & Miguel’s study of the culture of corruption through UN parking violations. How can culture – and cultural differences – be discerned? Only through isolating factors and creating a common environment can we determine culture’s effects in a scientific way. However, we see, live, experience cultural influences everyday. When working in an international environment, or in the field for a development project, how can the knowledge that culture influences actions and decision, as Prof. Fernandez found, help frame policies and programs when you can't isolate the cultural element? Culture is a tricky thing to pin down, but the use of immigrants was a new way (for me at least) to be able to conceive of cultural influences that span the rest of the environment.
I can’t quite do Fernandez’ presentation justice – here is the video of her presentation, and the paper from which she spoke.
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