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Gender

A collection of 7 issues

Preference for Sons in the US: Evidence from Business Names

I estimate preference for passing on businesses to sons by examining how common words son and sons are compared to daughter and daughters in the names of businesses. In the US, all businesses have to register with a state. And all states provide a way to search business names, in

Missing Women on the Streets of Delhi

In 1990, Amartya Sen estimated that more than 100 million women were missing in South and West Asia, and China. His NYRB article shed light on sex-discrimination in parts of Asia, highlighting, among other things, pathologies like sex-selective abortion, biases in nutrition, healthcare, and schooling. We aim to extend that

Stereotypical Understanding

The paucity of women in Computer Science, Math and Engineering in the US is justly widely lamented. Sometimes, the imbalance is attributed to gender stereotypes. But only a small fraction of men study these fields. And in absolute terms, the proportion of women in these fields is not a great

(No) Missing daughters of Indian Politicians

Indian politicians get a bad rap. They are thought to be corrupt, inept, and sexist. Here we check whether there is prima facie evidence for sex-selective abortion. According to data on the Indian Government ‘Archive’, 15th Lok Sabha members (csv) had, in all, 696 sons and 666 daughters for a

Lifting the Veil on Some Issues Around The Burka Debate

For the unfamiliar, the BBC guide to Muslim veils. The somewhat polemical: Assuming that God has recommended that women wear the burka, assuming that burka has no impact on a woman’s ability to communicate or quality of life, as has been suggested by its supporters, then here’s a

War and Sex

War is deadly for both sexes. A missile doesn’t differentiate between a man and a woman. Then, what is the role of gender in war? Nearly all active militaries in the world have substantially more male soldiers than female soldiers and far more men die on the battlefields than