Applied Economics Seminar Series. "Male Dominance and Cultural Extinction" (Joint Work with Ana Tur-Prats)
Published: 4 March 2025
23 April 2025. Dr Eleonora Guarnier, University of Bristol
Dr Eleonora Guarnier, University of Bristol
"Male Dominance and Cultural Extinction" (Joint Work with Ana Tur-Prats)
Wednesday, 23 April 2025. 15:00-16:30
Room 141A, Adam Smith Business School Building
Abstract
Why do some cultures and their associated values go extinct while others prevail? In this paper, we uncover a relationship between a society’s deep-rooted gender norms and its risk of cultural extinction, proxied by language loss: languages from more gender-equal societies face a higher likelihood of extinction compared to those from male-dominant societies. We measure language status and male-dominance using the Ethnologue and the Male Dominance Index (Guarnieri and Tur-Prats, 2023), respectively, for a global sample of 4,750 languages. The negative relationship between male dominance and extinction holds after accounting for fundamental determinants of economic development and societal collapse at the language-group level such as geography, climate variability, conflict exposure, and historical factors, as well as after the inclusion of country fixed effects. We then leverage European colonization as a natural experiment to investigate how inter-group dynamics shape cultural extinction. In a dyadic framework, we find that Indigenous societies with more gender-equal norms than their colonizers are significantly more vulnerable to cultural extinction. Cultural distance in gender norms is a stronger predictor of extinction than linguistic distance, distance in pre-colonial institutions, or the characteristics of either the colonizer or the Indigenous group.
Bio
Eleonora Guarnieri is an Assistant Professor (Senior Lecturer) at the University of Bristol, School of Economics. She is also affiliated with the CESifo Research Network. Her research focuses on applied microeconomics, particularly in the areas of development, gender, culture, and political economy.
For further information, please contact business-seminar-series@glasgow.ac.uk.
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First published: 4 March 2025