Gendered Language

Jakiela, Pamela ; Ozier, Owen

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION;    LINGUISTIC DETERMINISM;    EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT;    GENDER;    FEMALE LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-8464
RP-ID  :  WPS8464

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Languages use different systems forclassifying nouns. Gender languages assign many -- sometimesall -- nouns to distinct sex-based categories, masculine andfeminine. Drawing on a broad range of historical andlinguistic sources, this paper constructs a measure of theproportion of each country's population whose nativelanguage is a gender language. At the cross-country level,this paper documents a robust negative relationship betweenthe prevalence of gender languages and women's laborforce participation. It also shows that traditional views ofgender roles are more common in countries with more nativespeakers of gender languages. In African countries whereindigenous languages vary in terms of their genderstructure, educational attainment and female labor forceparticipation are lower among those whose native languagesare gender languages. Cross-country and individual-leveldifferences in labor force participation are large in bothabsolute and relative terms (when women are compared tomen), suggesting that the observed patterns are not drivenby development or some unobserved aspect of culture thataffects men and women equally. Following the proceduresproposed by Altonji, Elder, and Taber (2005) and Oster(2017), this paper shows that the observed correlations areunlikely to be driven by unobservables. Using a permutationtest based on the structure of the language tree and thedistribution of languages across countries, this paperdemonstrates that the results are not driven by spuriouscorrelations within language families. Gender languagesappear to reduce women's labor force participation andperpetuate support for unequal treatment of women.