Tag: FROGEE
Enhanced Access to Data Can Reduce the Gender Gap
Researchers from the FREE Network institutes have authored the policy brief ‘Closing the Gender Data Gap,’ published to commemorate and raise awareness on International Women’s Day, celebrated on March 8.
In recent decades, advancements in documenting historical developments, coupled with enhanced data access and novel approaches to data collection, have significantly augmented comprehension of the distinct economic outcomes experienced by women and men. Today, knowledge extends considerably further in areas such as labor market outcomes, income levels, lifelong wealth accumulation, educational investments, pension dynamics, consumption patterns, and time utilization—particularly in relation to caregiving and household responsibilities.
Researchers from the FREE Network institutes have assembled a concise overview of pivotal studies that have reshaped the understanding of economic disparities between women and men, often leveraging access to distinctive data sources. This compilation underscores the imperative for improved data quality, emphasizing its crucial role in the strategic design of policies aimed at mitigating these differences effectively.
Four key insights from the policy brief:
- Governments and public institutions should make increasing amounts of digitized information available for research purposes.
- Funding should be available to collect data through surveys, which can be combined with details available in administrative sources to leverage survey data and the precision of official statistics.
- Information must be collected regularly to ensure that the consequences of various major events, such as legislative changes, conflicts, pandemics, or natural disasters, can be identified.
- Innovative data sources, such as information from mobile apps or social media, can provide additional useful insights into socio-economic trends, old and new dimensions of inequalities, and regular updates on different aspects of gender disparities.
The policy brief ‘Closing the Gender Data Gap’ is authored by Michal Myck (CenEA), Monika Oczkowska (CenEA), Pamela Campa (SITE), Maria Perrotta Berlin (SITE), and Jesper Roine (SITE). It is available in the FREE Network’s policy briefs section.
For media or press information, please get in touch with Maria Perrotta Berlin, Professor at SITE, phone: 0737332198, Email: Maria.Perrotta [at] hhs.se.
Closing the Gender Data Gap
High-quality data plays a crucial role in enhancing our comprehension of evolving social phenomena, and in designing effective policies to address existing and future challenges. This particularly applies to the gender dimension of data, given the profound impact of the pervasive so-called “gender data gap”. In recent decades, data recovered from archives, high quality surveys, and census and administrative data, combined with innovative approaches to data analysis and identification, has become pivotal for the progress of documenting structural gender differences. Nonetheless, before we can close the gender gaps on the labour market, within households, in politics, academia and other areas, researchers and policy-makers must first ensure a closure of the gender data gap.
Policy Brief | EN langauge version Policy Brief | GE language version |
Introduction
Any progress in our understanding of social phenomena hinges on the availability of data, and there is no doubt that recent advances in economics and other social sciences would not have been possible without countless high quality data sources. As we argue in this policy brief, this applies also, and perhaps particularly, to the documentation of different dimensions of gender inequalities and the analysis to identify their causes. Over the last few decades innovative ways to document historical developments, combined with improvements in the access to existing data, as well as new approaches to data collection, have become cornerstones in the progress made in our understanding of the various expressions of gender inequality. In the economic sphere this has covered themes such as labor market status, earning and income levels, wealth accumulation over the life course, education investments, pensions, as well as consumption patterns and time allocation – in particular caregiving and household work. Researchers have also been able to empirically study gender inequalities in politics, culture, crime, the justice system and in academia itself.
Groundbreaking studies in gender economics, including those by Claudia Goldin, the recent Nobel Prize laureate, would not have been possible without high quality data and innovative ways aimed at closing the “gender data gap”, a term coined by Caroline Criado Perez, in her bestseller “Invisible women” (Criado Perez, 2020). In the introduction to the book she notes that “(…) the chronicles of the past have left little space for women’s role in the evolution of humanity, whether cultural or biological. Instead, the lives of men have been taken to represent those of humans overall.” (p. XI). The gender data gap is the result of deficits of informative data sources on women, which has been augmented by frequent lack of differentiation of information by sex/gender in available sources. Closing the gender gaps along the dimensions already identified in existing studies will require a continuous monitoring of evidence, thus closing the gender data gap in the first place. New studies focused on greater equality and on the effectiveness of various implemented policies will continue to rely on good data. Thankfully, few new datasets currently ignore the gender of the respondents. However as our understanding of the biological and cultural aspects of sex and gender grows, the way data is collected will need to be modified.
As we prepare for the new challenges ahead of those designing data collection efforts and examining the data, we believe it is important to give credit to the authors of some of the groundbreaking studies that paved the way to the current pool of evidence on gender inequality. Around the time of the International Women’s Day, we recall several empirical studies in gender economics that, in our opinion, merit special attention due to either their innovative approaches to data collection, their unique access to original data sources, or their methodological novelty. These studies bring valuable insights into specific dimensions of gender inequality. This short list is naturally a subjective choice, but we believe that all of these studies deserve credit not only among researchers within gender economics, but also among those more broadly interested in the recent progress in the understanding of different aspects of gender inequality.
From Data to Policy Recommendations
Over the last few decades substantial efforts have been made to provide empirical evidence concerning historical trends in inequalities between men and women on the labor market. Seminal work in this field was conducted by Claudia Goldin in the 1970s and 80s, culminating in the publication of the path-breaking book Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women (Goldin, 1990). The book fundamentally changed the view of women’s role in the labor market. Empirically Goldin shows that female labor force participation has been significantly higher in historical times than previously believed. Before Goldin, researchers mainly studied twentieth century data. Based on this it looked as if women’s participation in the labour market is positively correlated with economic growth. Goldin’s work showed instead that women were more likely to participate in the labour force prior to industrialization, and that early expansion of factories made it more difficult to combine work and family. Seen over the full 200 year period, from before industrialization to today, the pattern of women’s labour market participation is in fact U-shaped, pointing to the importance of various societal changes that alter incentives and possibilities for women’s work. Goldin’s contribution is however not just about getting the empirical picture right. At least equally important is the recognition of women as individual economic agents, who make forward looking decisions under various institutional constraints and limitations related to social norms about identity and family, as well as education opportunities and labor market options. While some decision can be modeled as taken by “the economic man”, others by households, it may seem surprising that studying women’s decisions was for so long neglected.
Institutional, cultural and economic factors behind historical trends have become the focus of much of the literature trying to identify the forces driving gender disparities. Some of the most original work considers the role that “chance” plays in determining individual decisions related to gender – how having a first-born son (e.g. Dahl and Moretti, 2008) or having twins (Angrist and Evans, 1998), both of which can be considered random, – affect choices related to partnership, future fertility and the labor market. Others examin the influence of gender imbalances caused by major historical events. Brainerd (2017) investigates the consequences of extremely unbalanced sex ratios in cohorts particularly affected by the massive loss of lives during World War II in the Soviet Union. By exploiting a unique historical data source derived from the first postwar census, combined with statistics registry records from archives, Brainerd provides evidence that the war-induced scarcity of men profoundly affected women’s outcomes on the marriage market. Women were more likely to never get married, give birth out of wedlock and get divorced. On top of that, unbalanced sex ratios affected married women’s intrahousehold bargaining power and resulted in lower fertility rates and a higher rate of marriages with a large age gap between spouses. The post-war institutional setup increased the cost of divorce and withdrew legal obligations to support children fathered out of wedlock, which exacerbated the consequences from the shortage of men by further reducing the rates of registered marriages and increasing marital instability.
The examples above highlight how conditions beyond individuals’ control can contribute to social gender imbalances, or shed light on existing gender biases. How these ‘exogenous’ circumstances translate into economic inequalities and what additional factors drive disparities has been the focus of much academic work on gender inequalities. One of the most challenging questions has been that of demonstrating that discrimination of women, rather than women’s characteristics or choices, are behind the growing body of evidence on economic gender inequality. In this respect Black and Strahan (2001) provide important convincing conclusions by using significant changes in the level of regulation in the US banking sector. Increasing competition between banks lowered banks’ profits, and led to a reduced ability of managers to ‘divide the spoils’, and thus to discriminate between different types of employees. The authors used information on wages within specific industries (including banking) from one of the oldest ongoing surveys in the world – the US Current Population Survey (CPS). By exploiting detailed individual data covering a period of several decades the authors show that higher levels of banking sector regulations (prior to deregulation) facilitated greater premia paid out to male compared to female employees. Thus, increased competition in the banking sector brought favorable changes to women’s pay conditions as well as their position in banks’ management.
While long running surveys such as the CPS continue to serve as invaluable sources of information on the relative conditions of men and women, the growing availability of administrative data has opened new opportunities for documentation of inequalities and identification of the reasons behind these. For instance, the ability to track individuals throughout their work history before and after the arrival of their first child has allowed researchers to compare the trajectories of women’s and men’s earnings, wages and working hours. This comparison has revealed the existence of the so-called “child penalty”, with women experiencing a drop in their labor market position relative to their male partners after the birth of their first child, and with the gap persisting for many years. Strikingly, this penalty has been estimated in some of the most gender-equal countries in the world, such as Sweden (Angelov et al., 2016) and Denmark (Kleven et al., 2019), two countries which have spearheaded collecting and making rich administrative data available to researchers.
Another area where individual register data has proven invaluable is in the study of the so-called “glass ceiling”, i.e., the sharply increasing differences between men and women when it comes to pay as well as representation in the very top of the income distribution. In a seminal study by Albrecht et al. (2003), individual earnings for men and women were compared and differences were found to be markedly higher (with men earning much more) when comparing men in the top of the male income distribution with women in the top of the female income distribution. Also making use of Swedish registry data, Boschini et al. (2020) study a related question, namely the evolution of the share of women in the top of the income distribution. In line with other glass-ceiling results, they demonstrate that the share of women in the top is small, and that it gets smaller the higher one looks, , although it has increased over time. Decomposing incomes into labor earnings and capital income they also show that while women seem to be catching up in the labor income distribution, they clearly lag in the capital income distribution. Also, the income profile of the partners of high-income men and high-income women are strikingly different. Most high-income women have high-income partners, while the opposite is not true for high-income men.
Differences in the economic position of men and women reflected in the above examples can have their origin much before the time individuals enter the labor market. They can be driven by differences in schooling opportunities, as well as other forms of early life investments, to the extent that even much of what is perceived as choices or preferences later in life are in fact results of these subtle early life disadvantages for women. While these have largely diminished in the global North, there is a growing number of studies documenting these differences in the global South. Jayachandran and Pande (2017) examine the impact of son preference, a widespread cultural practice for example in India, on child health and development. The study leverages a simple, standardized, and broadly available indicator – the height of children – which is measured at routine health checks and included in many population surveys, such as the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). Additionally, their use of a natural experiment, based on the birth order of children, helps to establish a causal relationship between eldest son preference and nutritional disparities that have long-term developmental consequences among subsequent children, not only for girls but for Indian children on average. Findings like these underscore the importance of gender equality not only as a fundamental value but also as a crucial factor in promoting growth and development at the societal level.
The social costs of gender inequality have also motivated the growing research interest in gender-based violence and crime. Given the specific challenges associated with these topics – such as the clandestine and underreported nature of these acts but also the consideration for victims’ confidentiality and safety – studies in this area has required researchers to develop and apply innovative tools and data collection methods. In this framework list experiments have emerged as a methodology allowing respondents to disclose sensitive or socially undesirable attitudes indirectly, reducing the likelihood of the so-called social desirability bias in survey reporting. In a list experiment, respondents are presented with a set of statements or behaviors and asked to indicate their agreement or engagement with these. Among listed items, one is considered “sensitive” and is included only for a randomly selected subset of respondents. By comparing the average number of items agreed with by the entire sample to a control group that did not get the sensitive item, researchers can estimate the proportion of respondents who agreed with or engaged in the sensitive behavior or opinion. Kuklinski et al. (1997) is one of the pioneering contributions in this area, estimating the proportion of voters who harbored racial prejudices but who may have been unwilling to admit it in a direct survey question. List experiments have since become a widely used tool in political science and economics and have helped in the advancement of our understanding of gender-based violence (Peterman et al., 2018). Given the strong assumptions underlying the analysis the method has not become the ”statistical truth serum” it was at some point considered to be. However, list experiments have broadened the analytical opportunities in an area plagued by significant informational and data challenges.
While worldwide gender gaps in economic opportunities and especially in education and health have rapidly declined (and sometimes reversed) in the last decades, larger differences remain in political empowerment (see e.g., WEF Gender Gap Report 2023). Another Nobel Prize laureate in economics, Esther Duflo, in her joint work with Raghabendra Chattopahyay (2004), have pioneered a highly prolific area of research on the impacts of women as policymakers. In their study, they leverage a unique policy experiment in India that randomized the gender of the leader of Village Councils, and a detailed dataset based on extensive surveys administered to both Village Council leaders and villagers. The surveys allowed for estimation of the investments in different public goods in 265 Village Councils, as well as the preferences over each of these public goods among female and male villagers. Combining the randomization and this rich dataset, the authors establish that political leaders prioritize public goods that are more relevant to the needs of their own gender, suggesting that women’s under-representation in politics might result in women’s and men’s preferences being unequally represented in policy decisions.
Conclusions and Recommendations
The narrowing gender gap in political representation across various levels of government, the growing influence of women in other areas such as public institutions, administration etc., and the heightened awareness of the crucial role gender equality plays in socio-economic progress all bode well for improvements in access to high-quality gender-differentiated data sources. Before we can recognize and close gender gaps identified from high-quality data, the gender data gap needs to firstly be closed. Governments and public institutions should make their increasing amounts of digitized information available for research purposes. Funding should be available to collect data through surveys, and these could in turn be combined with details available in administrative sources to take advantage of the breadth of survey data and the precision of official statistics. Information needs to be collected on a frequent and regular basis to make sure that the consequences of various major developments, such as legal changes, conflicts or natural disasters, can be identified. Innovative data sources, for instance information from mobile apps or social media, can provide additional useful insights into socio-economic trends, old and new dimensions of inequalities and regular timely updates on different aspects of gender disparities. These new data sources can become the basis for future innovative studies on gender inequalities, contributing to a better understanding of the mechanisms behind these inequalities, and providing evidence for policies and other efforts to effectively close the remaining gaps. Already now there is enough evidence to conclude that closing these gaps is not only just but that it also constitutes a fundamental basis for continued inclusive economic development.
Post Scriptum
Contributing to the existing pool of data sources we are happy to share a regional dataset with information on gender norms and gender-based violence: the FROGEE Survey 2021. The data was collected using the CATI method (phone interviews) in autumn 2021 in Belarus, Georgia, Latvia, Poland, Russia, Sweden and Ukraine. In each country interviews were conducted with between 925 and 1000 adults. The survey covered areas such as: basic demographics, material conditions, labor market status, gender norms, attitudes towards harassment and violence, awareness of violence against women and awareness of legal protection for gender violence victims.
The data collection was funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) as part of the FREE Network’s FROGEE project. The dataset and supporting materials are freely available for research purposes. For more information see: FROGEE Survey on Gender Equality.
References
- Angrist, D. J., and Evans, N. W. (1998). Children and their parents’ labor supply: Evidence from exogenous variation in family size. American Economic Review, 88(2), 450-477.
- Albrecht, J., Björklund, A., and Vroman, S. (2003). Is there a glass ceiling in Sweden? Journal of Labor Economics, 21(1), 145-177.
- Angelov, N., Johansson, P., and Lindahl, E. (2016). Parenthood and the gender gap in pay. Journal of Labor Economics, 34(3), 545-579.
- Black, S. E., and Strahan, P. E. (2001). The division of spoils: Rent-sharing and discrimination in a regulated industry. American Economic Review, 91(4), 814-831.
- Boschini, A., Gunnarsson, K., and Roine, J. (2020). Women in top incomes: Evidence from Sweden 1971–2017. Journal of Public Economics, 181, 104-115.
- Brainerd, E. (2017). The lasting effect of sex ratio imbalance on marriage and family: Evidence from World War II in Russia. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 99(2), 229-242.
- Chattopadhyay, R., and Duflo, E. (2004). Women as policymakers: Evidence from a randomized policy experiment in India. Econometrica, 72(5), 1409-1443.
- Criado Perez, C. (2020). Invisible women. Vintage, London.
- Dahl, G. B., and Moretti, E. (2008). The demand for sons. Review of Economic Studies, 75(4), 1085-1120.
- Goldin, C. (1990). Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women. Oxford University Press.
- Kleven, H., Landais, C., and Søgaard, J. E. (2019). Children and gender inequality: Evidence from Denmark. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 11(4), 181-209.
- Kuklinski, J. H., Sniderman, P. M., Knight, K., Piazza, T., Tetlock, P. E., Lawrence, G. R., & Mellers, B. (1997). Racial prejudice and attitudes toward affirmative action. American Journal of Political Science, 402-419.
- Jayachandran, S., and Pande, R. (2017). Why are Indian children so short? The role of birth order and son preference. American Economic Review, 107(9), 2600-2629.
- Peterman, A., Palermo, T. M., Handa, S., Seidenfeld, D., and Zambia Child Grant Program Evaluation Team (2018). List randomization for soliciting experience of intimate partner violence: Application to the evaluation of Zambia’s unconditional child grant program. Health Economics, 27(3), 622-628.
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.
FROGEE Survey on Gender Equality in Eastern Europe: Dataset
This dataset provides a broad set of indicators on dimensions of gender inequality based on the FROGEE Gender Equality in Eastern Europe survey. The survey was designed jointly by researchers in the FREE Network with a long time involvement in the FROGEE collaboration, and administered at the end of 2021 to representative samples in the 8 countries of the network – Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Latvia, Poland, Russia, Sweden and Ukraine. The survey covers many domains of everyday life, including socio-economic conditions, demographics, material situation, family, and housing. It also explores domestic and gender-based violence through questions centered on individual evaluations and perceptions rather than personal experiences of violence. Additionally, the survey examines respondents’ attitudes towards violence and harassment as well as perceived inequalities, and their perspectives on the existing legal framework.
Data Policy
This page provides the dataset for scientific use. Researchers can freely use the data in its unchanged form or after any transformation for scientific purposes, provided that proper attribution is made to the source, but not in any way that suggests that FREE NETWORK endorses the user or their use of the data. The data for this study were gathered through interviews, conducted on a voluntary and confidential basis, ensuring that participants’ responses are kept confidential.
Suggested citation: FREE Network. (2024). FROGEE Gender Equality in Eastern Europe Survey Data [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10777928
Explore the Dataset
Observing Experiences: Gender Bias and Treatment of Women in Daily Life
Witnessing Violence and Harassment Against Women in Everyday Situations
Attitudes Toward Gender-based Abuse
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.
Gender Equality and Women’s Economic Empowerment in Times of Crisis: Insights Shared at the 2023 FROGEE Conference
On October 19-20, 2023, the International School of Economics at Tbilisi State University Policy Institute (ISET Policy Institute), in partnership with the Forum for Research on Gender Economics (FROGEE), organized the conference “Gender Equality and Women’s Economic Empowerment in Times of Crisis”. The conference addressed critical issues surrounding gender equality and women’s economic empowerment. By bringing together academics and practitioners from various sectors it served as a dynamic platform for knowledge sharing and collaboration on actionable solutions and commitments to address multifaceted challenges faced by women globally. This policy brief outlines the keynote, academic and other presentations and discussions featured at the conference.
Introduction
Gender equality and women’s economic empowerment are vital issues that have gained increasing global attention in recent years. Their significance is even more pronounced in times of crisis, such as during economic downturns or global health emergencies. Such challenging circumstances often exacerbate existing gender disparities and vulnerabilities, making it crucial to address the specific challenges women face in accessing economic opportunities and resources. Discussions on these matters delve into the complex intersection of gender equality and economic empowerment and how empowering women economically can contribute to more resilient and equitable societies.
The October 19-20 conference was aimed at examining and addressing the various aspects of gender equality and female empowerment. The conference begun with opening introductions by Tamar Sulukhia, Eva Atterlöv and Kaori Ishikawa (see the participant list at the end for all associations). Following the opening remarks were two distinctive keynote presentations, a policy panel discussion, and academic presentations. This policy brief summarizes the key takeaways from the conference.
Keynote Addresses
The conference’s first keynote speaker, Elizabeth Brainerd, deliberated on the impact of World War II on marriage and fertility among Russian women. Brainerd show that the war affected these women’s lives for decades, leading to lower rates of marriage and fertility and higher out-of-wedlock births and divorce rates in urban areas than would have been the case in absence of the war. These effects were likely exacerbated by a war and post-war institutional environment that encouraged nonmarital births (in part by expanding the child benefit program) and increased the cost of binding commitments through marriage, particularly for men (absolving fathers of any financial or legal responsibility for children fathered outside marriage). As shown by Brainerd the shock to sex ratios in the Soviet Union due to World War II was among the largest experienced by any country in the twentieth century. In this sense, the effect on Russian women and men was unique and arguably not directly relevant to other countries or time periods. Yet, highly unbalanced sex ratios characterize many populations – whether due to war, immigration and emigration, or preferences for sons etc., – and the analysis can therefore shed light on the effects of sex ratio imbalance also in other contexts. Brainerd’s work supports the conclusion that sex ratios matter for marital and fertility outcomes, both on the marriage market itself and within marriage. The insights from the Soviet Union also highlights that the institutional context matters for determining both the size and direction of the sex ratio’s impact on marriage markets and family formations.
In the conferences second keynote presentation, Maria Floro discussed the findings from a time-allocation survey in Georgia. Evident from the results, women’s work differs from men’s in the sense that women more often perform unpaid household tasks, and since they are primarily responsible for household and caregiving duties, including childcare and elderly care. Such combined responsibilities, coupled with working in typically low-paid jobs can negatively affect women’s physical and mental wellbeing. As the data shows, 66 percent of Georgia’s population engage in unpaid domestic work, with women (88.3 percent) and men (39.6 percent) participating at starkly different rates. Rural women’s participation is the highest, at 90,3 percent. On average, the Georgian population spends 2.1 hours per day on unpaid domestic services for household and family members – with a large gender disparity. In general, the time spent per day by men is 0.7 hours while, in contrast, the time spent by women on these activities is 5 times higher in rural areas (3.6 hours) and 4.7 times higher in urban areas (3.2 hours). Women working full time spend 2.7 hours per day on unpaid domestic services, five times higher than the 0.5 hours spent by men working full time. For all areas of residence, the time spent on unpaid domestic services by women increases with age up until 64 years of age when the numbers drop. Further, women’s time spent on unpaid caregiving work (0.9 hours per day) is 4.5 times higher than the time spent by men. Even for full time working women, the daily time spent on unpaid caregiving work (0.6 hours) is three times higher than that of their male counterparts (0.2 hours). Women who have completed a higher level of education spend higher time on unpaid caregiving services (0.9-1.1 hours per day) than those with a lower level of education (0.4-0.7 hours per day). The difference in women’s and men’s time spent on unpaid caregiving work is greatest for Georgians aged 25-44. Such unequal sharing of household and caregiving responsibilities limits women’s job prospects and is a major reason behind their low participation rate in the labor force, as well as the gender pay gap.
The South Caucasus Gender Equality Index
Following the keynote presentations, Davit Keshelava, presented the ISET Policy Institute’s most recent work on the South Caucasus Gender Equality Index (SCGEI). The index, developed by ISET Policy Institute in close collaboration with Swiss Cooperation Office in Georgia and updated on an annual basis, draws inspiration from the European Institute for Gender Equality’s Gender Equality Index. It comprises of six domains: work, money, knowledge, time, power, and health, alongside eleven subdomains and nineteen indicators.
The index is calculated for three South Caucasus countries, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, and nine benchmark countries: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and Slovenia. The 2023 edition, mainly based on data from 2021-2022, reveals that within the South Caucasus Armenia is ahead concerning gender equality in the work domain, while Georgia trails behind its regional counterparts. Gender equality in the work domain is lower in the South Caucasus (64.0) than in the baseline countries (67.3).
Georgia stands out as the South Caucasus leader in gender equality within the money domain but significantly trails the baseline countries (South Caucasus – 51.1 vs. baseline countries – 80.5). This discrepancy is the most prominent across all six domains. Azerbaijan leads in the knowledge domain (with Armenia displaying the greatest inequality), yet the South Caucasus slightly outpaces baseline countries in this domain (South Caucasus – 59 and baseline countries – 58.8). This is however the sole equality domain where the South Caucasus surpasses the benchmark countries.
Georgia and Armenia exhibit higher equality in the power domain than Azerbaijan while, in the time domain, Georgia takes the lead in the South Caucasus. In the health domain, Armenia leads in equality, although the difference in index values is marginal.
In the overall index, Georgia emerges as the regional leader in gender equality (60.4), followed by Armenia (57.5) and Azerbaijan (53.0). However, South Caucasus countries as a whole have a lower index (55.4) than the baseline countries (64.1).
Panel Discussion: Topics and Takeaways
The SCGEI presentation was followed by a policy panel discussion, moderated by Tamar Sulukhia and including the panelists Nino Okribelashvili, Nino Chelidze, Nani Bendeliani and Nino Lortkipanidze. The panelists discussed gender inequalities in different areas such as within academia and the tech industry as well as the role of women during crises and the progress made in Georgia towards ensuring gender equality.
Nino Okribelashvili deliberated on the role of women in academia emphasizing that gender inequalities in higher education attainment become obvious when looking at the representation of women across different fields of science. The share of women in subjects such as social work, education and nursing is more than 80 percent, while it is 20 percent in subjects such as computer science, electrical engineering and mechanical engineering. Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) oriented institutions are still generally perceived as male dominated. The second glaring gap concerns the representativeness of women in higher rank and leadership positions in academia, where women remain underrepresented in academic and professorial positions across all subjects.
While Nino Okribelashvili discussed the role of women in academia in general, Nino Lortkipanidze focused specifically on the tech industry. She discussed the industry’s potential to create job opportunities for women through various strategies and initiatives such as STEM education and training, diverse hiring practices, leadership development and flexible work policies – including remote work possibilities. Lortkipanidze emphasized that with the right support and opportunities, the rapidly growing tech industry could allow working mothers to thrive in their careers while also enjoying the advantages of a family-friendly work environment.
Shifting the focus to women in times of crisis, Nino Chelidze emphasized the aggravated impact of war on women using the example of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Chelidze highlighted the need for urgent, coordinated action from the donor community to address the challenges of internally displaced persons, most of whom are women and children.
The panel discussion wrapped up with Nani Bendeliani highlighting Georgia’s advancements in gender equality and female empowerment over the past three decades. Bendeliani mentioned different institutional mechanisms adopted in the country for the advancement of women alongside legislative initiatives implemented in different areas concerning for instance maternity and paternity leave, changes to the labor code and the election code. According to Bendeliani, the progress towards gender equality is visible but slow, with available data and multiple assessments showing there is still much to be done.
Academic Presentations
The remainder of the conference was comprised of several academic sessions all contributing to the overall theme of multifaceted gender-related issues. The topics, as detailed below, were: gender disparities in the labor market, violence against women, gender dynamics during the Covid-19 pandemic, the gender divide in education, women in academia and female empowerment and access to services.
Gender Disparities on the Labor Market
The presenters focused on gender disparities on the labor market, exploring aspects such as the implications of labor protection regulations on both men and women, biases and discrimination in employment and wage negotiation, and the impact of female labor force participation on the advancement of women’s rights.
In his presentation, Michal Myck outlined the consequences of labor protection policies in Poland for employees within four years of retirement (regulation that protects them against layoffs, a lowering of their wages or adjustment of their responsibilities). Preliminary results indicate no economically or statistically significant adverse impacts on the employment of men and women approaching labor protection eligibility. These findings suggest that either the anticipated negative effects are absent, or that any concerns employers may have harbored regarding prospective employment protection were counteracted by robust labor demand during the reform period. The general conclusion is that extending protection to specific groups of workers, both men and women, does not necessarily lead to the adverse outcomes often highlighted in standard economic theory.
While Michal Myck focused on labor protection regulations, Francisco Lagos addressed the topic of weight-related employment discrimination and its impact on hiring outcomes. In an experiment, job applications accompanied either by a facial photo of a normal-weight person or by a photo of the same person manipulated to look overweight were sent out to real job opening across 12 occupations in Spain. The results reveal a significant disparity in callback rates for weight-manipulated male applicants, who received fewer callbacks compared to their normal-weight counterparts, with a more pronounced effect in female-dominated occupations. Conversely, weight-manipulated female applicants experienced a slight increase in callbacks, particularly in female-dominated fields. For men, the weight manipulation effect is attributed to the overweight making them appear less attractive, which translates into an attractiveness wage premium. On the contrary the findings for women suggest evidence of an attractiveness penalty, which is also combined with a weight penalty.
The topics of discrimination and biases were also central to Ramon Cobo Reyes Cano’s presentation, which outlined the results of a field experiment on anticipated discrimination and wage negotiation. The findings show that female applicants ask for a lower salary than male applicants in the baseline treatment group – when the full name of the applicant is visible. In the main treatment group, when the gender of the applicant was no longer visible to the employer, the wage requested by female applicants increased by 86 percent, whereas male applicants’ wage requests were 18 percent lower. Evidently, the gender gap in requested wages completely disappears (and even slightly reverses) when the applicants know that their sex is not visible for the potential employer.
The presentations on gender inequalities in the labor market were concluded by Nisar Ahmad, who empirically investigate the impact of women’s labor force participation on women’s rights. In general, female labor force participation has a positive effect on women’s rights in countries with at least some legal economic rights for women. In countries where women’s rights are extremely limited or non-existent, female labor force participation has a negative or negligible impact on women’s rights.
Violence Against Women
In the academic session devoted to violence against women, the presenters elaborated on the primary factors influencing such violence in various countries at different time periods, including during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Monika Oczkowska explores how social norms, values, and stereotypes determine beliefs about abuse, including recognition of abuse, what is considered as abuse, whether abuse is ever justified, and societal consent towards gender-based discrimination. In countries where gender inequality is rampant, reported rates of abuse in standard surveys are sensitive to the socio-economic status and beliefs about gender norms of the participants, highlighting a high scale of variation in the perception of gender-based discrimination in Central and Eastern Europe.
These findings are in line with the results presented by Salome Gelashvili, who consider potential determinants of gender-based violence (GBV) in South Caucasus. According to the research, key factors contributing to GBV in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia include alcohol abuse, social stigma, being a member of a marginalized groups, a pervasive patriarchal culture, adherence to traditional gender roles, a high level of bureaucracy when reporting GBV to the police, generally weak legal support, limited awareness about various forms of GBV, and economic factors such as financial dependence on an abusive partner.
Similar outcomes, but with more emphasis put on norms and the patriarchal system, were found by Reina Shehi, who assesses gender-based violence in Albania. The results show that the patriarchal system and gender-based norms are the two main factors contributing to gender-based violence. However, there is a growing awareness of the importance of patriarchal institutions and gender norms when addressing GBV in Albania.
Violence against women increase in times of crisis, as shown by Velan Nirmala, who studies women’s empowerment and intimate partner violence (IPV) in India. The findings reveal that, regardless of socio-economic factors, the main types of IPV during the Covid-19 lockdown were physical and emotional violence. The results also highlight that a large majority of victims, regardless of education, wealth, region, household structure, religion, and caste, do not disclose the abuse due to societal taboos.
Gender Dynamics During the Covid-19 Pandemic
The unequal effect from the Covid-19 pandemic was further examined in an academic session in which the presenters keyed in on repercussions of the pandemic on women in terms of employment outcomes, decisions related to time allocation, and the division of unpaid household labor.
Nabamita Dutta presented work on gender inequality in employment during Covid-19 related lockdowns in India. The results show that during the pandemic, women were, in general, 8 percent less likely to be employed than men. While return migrants generally suffered less in terms of finding alternative jobs, being a female return migrant, increased the probability of joblessness to about 17 percent. For female return migrants belonging to marginalized castes, the probability of joblessness was about 10 percent, an interesting result considering that women belonging to marginalized castes (but not being return migrants) experience a higher likelihood of being unemployed then women that are not part of marginalized castes.
Anne Devlin further elaborated on this topic, assessing the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on people living in disadvantaged areas in Ireland. The results indicate that Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) rates were higher in more deprived areas during lockdown periods and that woman, on average, receive PUP for a slightly longer duration than men. Further, female unemployment has a negative and statistically significant relationship with the length of PUP claims. The findings show that average PUP durations tend to be shorter in areas with a higher share of individuals with lower education levels, and in areas with historically higher levels of female unemployment.
Jacklyn Makaaru Arinaitwe presented work on how gender, culture, norms, and practices contributed to the unequal distribution of unpaid care work during Covid-19 in Uganda. The findings reveal that there are policy gaps in addressing the issue, as current policies don’t acknowledge the value of unpaid care work at a personal and national level. This lack of recognition and failure to come up with new ways to reduce or share women’s disproportionate burden of unpaid care work creates obstacles to girls’ education and hinder women’s economic empowerment in Uganda.
Also, on the topic of the Covid-19 pandemic impacts on women, Alessandro Toppeta presented work on the impacts of the pandemic on the role of parental beliefs in England. The results show that parents believe that the time they spend with their children is more valuable and less risky than the time children spend in formal childcare or with friends and that parents’ beliefs can predict the choices they make in investing time with their children. Further, the findings align with previous indications of the increased burden on women’s time experienced during the pandemic being a consequence of limited availability of alternative childcare options.
The Gender Divide in Education
Within the topic of gender in education, the presenters delved into the connection between education and gender roles and the importance of parental education for children’s education.
Sumit S. Deole presented work on the causal impact of education on gender role attitudes based on evidence from European datasets. The results suggest that an additional year of education prompts egalitarian gender role attitudes. Furthermore, the impact of increases in education is particularly prominent among women and, to some extent, in urban areas.
Fethiye Burcu Türkmen-Ceylan focus specifically on the importance of maternal education for children’s education in Turkey. Preliminary results indicate that maternal education has a distinctive positive impact on households’ budget allocation for children’s education among Turkish households.
Saumya Kumar also presented work on the importance of maternal education, considering the impacts of paternal education as well. The presented research finds that both maternal and paternal education reduce the gender gap in educational enrollment. However, having an educated mother is more important when it comes to increasing girls’ enrollment as compared to boys’ enrollment. The research also indicates that as mothers’ education levels rise, there is a greater increase in spendings on education for both boys and girls.
Further on the gender divide within education, Lubna Naz deliberated on how drought affects school attendance in rural Pakistan. The income decline caused by drought leads to a four-month decrease in schooling for all children, and a six-month decrease for boys. Asset ownership also has a negative impact on school attendance, suggesting a possible reverse causality or Simpson’s paradox. The combined effect of asset ownership and drought, however, has a positive impact on school attendance, Naz concluded.
Women in Academia
Gender inequalities are apparent also in the academic sphere. Liis Roosaar’s research looks into the impact of having children on women’s careers within academia. Roosaar find that becoming a mother doesn’t impact earnings per hour, but that mother’s do work fewer hours. More than four years after having a child, women in academia have lost the equivalent of two years of full-time work. Interestingly, men don’t face the same reduction in work hours after becoming fathers. The study also reveals that the career setback for women in academia after having a child is shorter compared to the general population. However, female academics experience a decline in citations as a consequence of the reduced working hours.
Barbara Będowska-Sójka’s research on women in academia focus on female representation on editorial boards of finance journals. According to Będowska-Sójka women account for 20 percent of all editors on average, with considerable variance between countries. When it comes to editor’s affiliations they are strongly concentrated in the United States, and to a lesser extent in the United Kingdom. Additionally, a small number of extremely well-connected editors sit on many boards. The gender ratio is consistent in substructures for editors that are better connected (have so-called a high degree of centrality in terms of network analysis) or editors who serve on a large number of boards, yet men outnumber women.
Female Empowerment and Access to Services
Although their research focuses on distinct topics, Fazle Rabbi and Ulrich Wohak both presented research on the overarching theme of women’s empowerment and enhanced access to goods and services.
In his paper, Fazle Rabbi and his co-authors consider a new way to support marginalized individuals, most of whom are women, through the introduction of a new donation model where development agencies provide goats to project beneficiaries. Goat ownership might help beneficiaries generate income and devote more time to education. The research results show that the proposed donation model significantly enhances the economic empowerment of participants, providing them a steady income, better access to education, and more access to the financial system – with the results being more pronounced for women.
Ulrich Wohak evaluated tampon tax reforms (efforts to reduce the taxation of menstrual hygiene products, including tampons, pads, and menstrual cups) as a means to address gender-based tax discrimination. Using transaction-level scanner data, the study finds that when countries lower their standard VAT rates, the extent to which these reductions are passed on to consumers ranges from 57 percent to 119 percent.
Concluding Remarks
The ISET conference “Gender Equality and Women’s Economic Empowerment in Time of Crisis” brought together diverse voices, perspectives, and expertise from various sectors to engage in discussions and knowledge sharing on how to advance gender equality in times of normality and in times of crises. The conference also served as a platform to inspire actionable solutions and commitments to address the multifaceted challenges women face worldwide.
List of Participants
- Alessandro Toppeta – Assistant Professor at SOFI, Stockholm University, Sweden. “Parental Beliefs, Perceived Health Risks, and Time Investment in Children: Evidence from COVID-19” (in collaboration with Gabriella Conti and Michele Giannola).
- Anne Devlin – Research Fellow, Economic and Social Research Institute, Ireland. “The Impact of COVID-19 on Women’s Employment in Ireland” (in collaboration with Adele Whelan, Seamus McGuinnes, Paul Redmond).
- Aswathi Rebecca Asok – PhD Fellow, University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom. “Unveiling Gendered Dimensions of “Volunteerism”: The COVID-19 Story of Kerala, India”.
- Barbara Będowska-Sójka – Head of Department, Poznań University of Economics and Business, Poland. “Editorial boards of finance journals: the gender gap and social networks” (in collaboration with Claudia Tarantola, C., Mare, C., Ozturkkal, B., Paccagnini, A., Perri, R., Pisoni, G., Shala, A., Skaftad´ottir, H., K.).
- Davit Keshelava – Lead Economist, ISET Policy Institute.
- Elizabeth Brainerd – Susan and Barton Winokur Professor of Economics and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Brandeis University.
- Eva Atterlöv – Deputy Head of Development Cooperation, Embassy of Sweden.
- Fazle Rabbi – Deputy Head of School of Business, Crown Institute of Higher Education, Australia. “From Goats to Education: An Innovative Approach to Community Empowerment” (in collaboration with Laurel Jackson and Zahid Hasan).
- Fethiye Burcu Türkmen-Ceylan – Research Fellow, Ahi Evran University, Turkey. “Educate a Woman, And You Educate a Generation: How Does Maternal Education Affect Intro Household Resource Allocation for Education among the Children?” (in collaboration with Ulucan, H., Çakmak, S.).
- Francisco Lagos – Professor of Economics, Georgetown University, USA. “Weight, Attractiveness, and Gender when Hiring: a Field Experiment in Spain” (in collaboration with Catarina Goulão, Juan Antonio Lacomba, and Dan-Olof Rooth).
- Jacklyn Makaaru Arinaitwe – Director, Ace Policy Research Institute, Uganda. “Gender, culture, norms, and practices that promote gender gaps in the allocation of time to unpaid domestic work in the context of COVID-19 in Uganda” (in collaboration with Twinomugisha David).
- Kaori Ishikawa – UN Women Country Representative to Georgia.
- Liis Roosaar – Lecturer at the Chair of Economic Modelling, University of Tartu, Estonia. “Child penalty in academia: Event study estimate” (in collaboration with Jaan Masso, Jaanika Meriküll, Kärt Rõigas, and Tiiu Paas).
- Lubna Naz – Associate Professor, Institute of Business Administration. Pakistan. “Left High and Dry: Gendered impacts of Drought on school attainment in Rural Pakistan”.
- Maria Floro – Professor Emerita Economics, American University in Washington, DC.
- Michal Myck – Director, Centre for Economic Analysis (CenEA), Poland. “Pre-retirement employment protection: no harm when times are good” (in collaboration with Paweł Chrostek, and Krzysztof Karbownik).
- Monika Oczkowska – Senior Research Economist, CenEA, Poland. “Patterns of harassment and violence against women in Central and Eastern Europe. The role of the socio-economic context and gender norms in international comparisons” (in collaboration with Kajetan Trzcinski and Michal Myck).
- Nabamita Dutta – Professor of Economics, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, USA. “Lockdown and Rural Joblessness in India: Gender Inequality in Employment?” (in collaboration with Kar, S.).
- Nani Bendeliani – Project Analyst, UN Women Georgia.
- Nino Chelidze – Program Director of Women’s Initiative for Security and Equity at Mercy Corps.
- Nino Lortkipanidze – Women in Tech Ambassador for Georgia and Chief Innovation Officer at The Crossroads.
- Nino Okribelashvili – Vice Rector for Research at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University.
- Ramon Cobo Reyes Cano – Professor of Economics, Georgetown University, USA. “Anticipated Discrimination and Wage Negotiation: A Field Experiment” (in collaboration with Gary Charness and Simone Meraglia).
- Reina Shehi – Primary Appointment Lecturer, Epoka University, Albania. “Patterns of Geographic Gender-Based Violence in Albania” (in collaboration with Endi Tirana and Ajsela Toci).
- Salome Gelashvili – Lead Economist, ISET Policy Institute, Georgia. “Gender-based violence in the South Caucasus” (in collaboration with Lobjanidze, G., Seturidze, E., Shubitidze I.).
- Saumya Kumar – Assistant Professor (Economics), University of Delhi, India. “Gender Differential in Parental Investment in Education: A Study of the Factors Determining Children’s and Adolescents’ Educational Investment in India” (in collaboration with Jawaharlal Nehru).
- Sumit S. Deole – Scientific Assistant, Trier University, Germany. “The Causal Impact of Education on Gender Role Attitudes: Evidence from European Datasets” (in collaboration with Zeydanli, T.).
- Tamar Sulukhia – Director ISET and ISET Policy Institute.
- Ulrich Wohak – Teaching and Research Associate, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria. Free the Period? Evaluating Tampon Tax Reforms using Transaction-Level Scanner Data (in collaboration with Kinnl, K.).
- Velan Nirmala – Professor of Economics, Pondicherry University, India. “Women Empowerment and Intimate Partner Violence in India” (in collaboration with Lusome, R).
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.
Insights and Research Shared at the 2023 FREE Network Retreat
The 2023 FREE Network Retreat, an annual face-to-face event for members of the FREE Network, gathered its representatives to share and exchange research ideas and to discuss its institutes’ respective work and joint efforts within the Network. An academic session highlighted multiple overarching areas of interest and opportunities for research collaboration and included a plenary session on topics ranging from theoretical underpinning of Vladimir Putin’s regime to climate change beliefs and to consumer behaviour in credit markets. A session addressing the respective institute’s work during the last year also demonstrated the importance and relevance of the FREE Network’s joint initiatives on gender, democracy and media, and climate change and environment: FROGEE, FROMDEE and FREECE. This brief gives a short outline of the plenary session and an overview of some further topics covered during the conference.
The Academic Day
The Academic Day consisted partly of a plenary session and partly of an academic session. The academic session was outlined to demonstrate the wide spectrum of research interests within the network and to promote and highlight the opportunities for research collaboration. Designed as a series of poster sessions, each organized around a common research theme, it allowed for an exchange of ideas between presenting researchers and the audience while displaying the overlap of the various research interests across the institutes. At the same time, the poster session combined the broad range of topics within 10 overarching subjects (trade, gender, migration and education, public economics, energy, labor, political economy and development, macro, conflict, and theory and auctions).
The plenary session further illustrated the wide variety of topics the FREE Network researchers’ work on. During the plenary session, three distinguished presentations were held, summarized in what follows.
“Why Did Putin Invade Ukraine? – A Theory of Degenerate Autocracy”
Firstly, Konstantin Sonin, Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, gave a presentation of his working paper (with Georgy Egorov, Northwestern University) in which the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine is explained through a theoretical framework on dictators’ decision-making in degenerate autocracies.
Sonin outlined how the beliefs about Ukraine in Kremlin, prior to the invasion, were factually wrong. For example, Kremlin believed that Ukraine, despite plenty of facts pointing in the opposite direction, lacked a stable government and had an incapable army. Further, it was believed that the US and Europe wouldn’t care about Ukraine and that Russian troops would be welcomed as liberators – the latter exemplified by the fact that Russia sent police and not the army during the first phase of the invasion. He also stressed that the decision to invade Ukraine is likely to have disastrous consequences for Vladimir Putin, his regime, and for Russia as a whole. This is, however, not the first example of a disastrous decision made by a leader of an autocratic regime, leading up to the question: What explains such choices that should not rationally have been made? And how can leaders make them in highly institutionalized environments where they are surrounded by councils and advisors who are supposed to possess the best expertise?
The model presented by Sonin assumes a leader in such highly institutionalized environment that wishes to stay in power and whose decisions are based on input from subordinates. The subordinates differ in level of their expertise and the leader thus chooses the quality of advice that he receives through his choice of subordinates. In turn, while giving advice to the leader, the subordinate considers two factors: the vulnerability of the leader and their own prospects should the leader fall. In equilibrium there is a tradeoff as competent subordinates are also less loyal (since a more competent person might know when to switch alliances and have better prospects if the regime changes).
The leader also has access to repression as an instrument. Repression decreases his changes to be overthrown but raises the stakes for a potential future power struggle, as a leader with a history of repression is more likely to be repressed by his successor.
This interaction creates a feedback loop. If a dictator chooses repression, he feels more endangered, and he then chooses a more loyal subordinate who is less likely to deceive him for personal gain under a potential new regime. However, this leads to the appointment of less competent subordinates whereafter the information that flows to the leader becomes less and less reliable – as illustrated by Kremlin’s beliefs about Ukraine prior to the war.
There are three types of paths in equilibrium, Sonin explained; 1. “stable autocracy”, with leaders altering in power and choosing peaceful paths without repressions 2. “degenerate autocracy” – where the incumbent and opponent first replace each other peacefully and then slide into the repression-based change of power (until one of them dies and the story repeats), and 3. “consecutive degenerate autocracy” – where each power struggle is followed by repression.
Concluding his presentation, Sonin highlighted that in a degenerate autocracy such as Russia, individual decisions by the leader are rarely crucial due to the high level of institutionalization. However, as shown by the model, the leader is inevitably faced with a situation where he is surrounded by incompetent loyalists feeding him bad intel and setting him up to make disastrous decisions – most recently displayed in Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.
“Facing the Hard Truth: Evidence from Climate Change Ignorance”
Pamela Campa, Associate Professor at Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics, gave the conference’s second presentation, which detailed her work (with Ferenc Szucz, Stockholm University) on climate change skepticism.
Campa opened her talk with the current paradox regarding climate change, where, in the scientific community there is a strong consensus about the existence of climate change, but in society at large, skepticism is largely prevalent. This can be exemplified by one quarter of the US population not believing in global warming in 2023, and Europeans not believing in the fact that humans are the main driver of climate change.
According to Campa, the key question to answer is therefore “Why does ignorance about climate change persist among the public – in spite of the overwhelming evidence?”. One possible explanation may be a deficit in comprehension; people simply don’t understand the complexity of climate change and thus follow biased media and/ or politicians more or less sponsored by lobbyists. However, research have shown scientifical literacy to be quite uncorrelated with climate change denial, contradicting the above explanation. The second hypothesis, and of focus in the study, instead revolve around the concept of information avoidance. To test the hypothesis that people actively avoid climate change information, the authors key in on coal mining communities in the US having been exposed to negative shocks in the form of layoffs. These communities are of interest given their strong sense of identity and the fact that they are directly affected by the green transition. Arguably, a layoff shock would negatively affect not only their economy, but also pose a threat to their perceived identity. Given the context, it can thus be assumed that these communities to a larger extent would avoid information on climate change and information post-shock to restore the threatened identity.
The authors consider US counties experiencing mass layoff (more than 30 percent of mining jobs lost between 2014 and 2017) as treated counties, finding that in these counties, learning about climate change is 30 to 40 percent lower than in counties having experienced no mass layoffs. To account for the fact that the layoff itself may cause changes in learning, the authors also consider an instrument variable analysis in which gas prices are exploited as instrument for the layoffs – once again displaying the fact that people in affected communities believe climate change to be caused by humans to a lesser extent, when compared to counties in which no mass layoffs had occurred.
Interestingly, when controlling with other industries with somewhat similar characteristics (such as metal mining), the drop in climate change learning disappears, feeding in the notion of “identity-based information avoidance”.
The lack of support for and consensus among the public of the ongoing climate change and its drivers might pose a threat for the green transition as well as reduce personal effort to reduce the carbon footprint, Campa concluded.
“Consumer Credit with Over-Optimistic Borrowers”
In the plenary session’s last presentation, Igor Livshits, Economic Advisor and Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, presented his working paper (with Florian Exler, University of Vienna, James MacGee, Bank of Canada and Michèle Tertilt, Mannheimer University) on consumer credit and borrower’s behaviour.
There has been much debate on whether and how to regulate consumer credit products to limit misuse of credit. In 2009/2010 several initiatives and regulations (such as the 2009 Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act) were introduced with the aim of protecting consumers and borrowers from arguments that sellers of credit products exploit lack of information and cognitive capacity of borrowers. There is however a lack of evaluation of such arguments and subsequent regulations, which Livshits explained to be the motivation behind the paper.
The paper differentiates between over-optimistic borrowers (behaviour borrowers) and rational borrowers (rationalists). While both types face the same risks, behaviour borrowers are more prone to shocks and are at the same time unaware of these worse risks (i.e., they believe they are rationalists). Focusing on these types of borrowers, the paper introduces a model in which the lenders endogenously price credit based on beliefs about the borrower type. Households decide whether to spend or save and if to file for bankruptcy in an environment in which they are faced with earning shocks and expense shocks.
In this structural model of unsecured lending and default, Livshits finds that behavioral borrowers’ “risky” behaviour negatively affects rationalists since both types are pooled together and, thus rationalists are overpaying to cover for the behaviour borrowers. A calibration of the model also suggests that behavioral borrowers borrow too much and file for bankruptcy too little and too late.
Livshits argued that the model does not provide evidence of the notion that borrowers need protection from lenders, but rather that borrowers need to be protected from themselves. In fact, had behaviour borrowers been made aware of the fact that they are overly optimistic about the actual state of their future incomes, they would borrow 15 percent less.
To address the increased risks behaviour borrowers take at the cost of rationalists, policies such as default made easier, taxation on borrowing, financial literacy efforts and score-dependent borrowing limits could all be considered. Such policies may lower debt and reduce bankruptcy filings but as they may also reduce welfare and exhibit scaling difficulties.
Updates from the Institutes
During the Retreat, the respective institutes shared the previous year’s work, and updates within the FREE Network’s three joint projects were also presented. These go under the acronyms of FROMDEE (Forum for Research on Media and Democracy in Eastern Europe), FREECE (Forum for Research on Eastern Europe; Climate and the Environment) and FROGEE (Forum for Research on Gender Economics in Eastern Europe), and address areas of great relevance in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. Researchers from all FREE Network institutes work on these topics, with the most recent policy paper written in coordination by SITE, KSE and CenEA (with expert Maja Bosnic, Niras International Consulting). The policy paper focuses on the gender dimension of the reconstruction of Ukraine – putting emphasis on the necessity of gender budgeting principles throughout the various parts of reconstruction. An upcoming joint research paper will consider the effects of gasoline price increase on household income across the Network’s countries, written under the FREECE umbrella.
The three themes of gender, media and democracy, and environment and climate are not only purely research topics within the institutes. They also reflect developments and challenges that the institutes to a various extent face in the respective contexts in which they operate. The work focusing on the reconstruction of Ukraine is an excellent example of an area that encompasses all three.
Another example of the relevance of the three themes features prominently in one of the institutes’ most tangible contribution to their respective societies: their education programs. Nataliia Shapoval, Vice President for Policy Research at Kyiv School of Economics (KSE), emphasized how KSE has – amid Russia’s war on Ukraine – managed to greatly expand. Over the past year, KSE has launched 8 new bachelor’s and master’s programs, some of which are directly targeted at ensuring postwar reconstruction competence. On a similar note, Lev Lvovskiy, Academic Director at the Belarusian Research and Outreach Center (BEROC) mentioned the likelihood of next year being able to offer students a bachelor’s program in economics and several business courses in Vilnius – BEROC’S new location. BEROC’s effort in providing quality education in economics to Belarus’ exile youth is considered a fundamental investment in the future of the country – providing a competent leading class capable of installing democracy and fair elections in Belarus once the current regime is gone. The emphasis on education was further highlighted by Salome Gelashvili, Practice Head, Agriculture & rural policy at the International School of Economics Policy Institute (ISET-PI) who not only mentioned the opening of a master’s program in Finance at ISET but also the fact that an increasing number of students who’ve recently graduated from PhD’s abroad are now returning to Georgia. Such investments into education are necessary to counter Russian propaganda in the region all three agreed, emphasizing the need to continually stem Russia’s negative influence in the region. This investment into education is also important to hinder countries from sliding away from democratic values – realized in Belarus and threatening in Georgia.
To further delve into the issues of democratic backsliding, a tendency that has been recently observed not only in the region but also more widely across the globe, FROMDEE will organize an academic conference in Stockholm on October 13th, 2023.
Concluding Remarks
The 2023 FREE Network Retreat provided a great opportunity for the Networks’ participants to jointly take part of new research and to share experiences, opportunities, and knowledge amongst each other. The Retreat also served as reminder of the importance of continuously supporting economic and democratic development, through research, policy work, and networking, in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus.
List of Presenters
- Konstantin Sonin, University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy
- Pamela Campa, Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics
- Igor Livshits, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.
Lessons From the FROGEE Conference “The Playing Field in Academia: Why Are Women Still Underrepresented?”
Despite an increase in women’s representation since the beginning of the 20th century, women remain underrepresented in academia and other high-skilled professions. Academia has been prone to gender disparities both within and across fields as well as across academic ranks. In an endeavour to examine and address the underrepresentation of women in the academic profession, the Centre of Economic Analysis (CenEA), together with the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) and other partners of the Forum for Research on Gender Economics (FROGEE) at the FREE Network, organized the two-day conference “The playing field in academia: Why are women still underrepresented?”, in Warsaw June 21-22, 2023. This brief offers insights from the presentations and panel discussions held at the conference.
To date, there are few, if any, high-skilled professions exhibiting gender balance, and academia is no exception. Consequently, this imbalance has been subject to increased multidisciplinary research attention, exploring its origins and potential remedies. However, attaining a comprehensive understanding of gender disparities remains a challenge. For instance, much remains to be learnt about their long-run dynamics, a subject addressed by Carlo Schwarz, in one of the conference’s keynote lectures.
A Century of Progress
Carlo Schwarz (in joint work with Alessandro Iaria and Fabian Waldinger, 2022) trace the evolution of gender gaps in academia across a variety of domains at the global level throughout the 20th Century. Facilitated by an unprecedentedly large database of nearly 500,000 academics, spanning 130 countries and supplemented by publication and citation data, the authors specifically examine gender imbalances in recruitment, publishing, citation patterns, and promotions.
They find that in 1900 women constituted roughly 1 percent of all hires in academia (226 women, with only 113 hired as full professors). By 1969 the share of female academics had risen to about 6.6 percent, and by the year 2000 it had grown to approximately 17 percent. These rates varied across disciplines, institutions, and countries. For instance, teaching-centric disciplines such as pedagogy and linguistics, exhibited higher representation relative to research-oriented ones.
The research subsequently reveals a hump-shaped evolution of the gender gap in academic output – starting small before peaking at 45 percentage points fewer publications by women in 1969, thereafter declining to 20 percentage points. These publication disparities were also found to share a U-shaped relationship with the share of women in academia, indicating the interconnectedness of gender gaps.
The authors also address gender gaps in citations, identified by the use of a novel machine learning approach, forecasting a paper’s citations had it been written by a man. The results indicate a progressive reduction in the citation gap during the 20th century, decreasing from 27 percentage points (pre-WW1) to 14 percentage points (interwar) and eventually to 8 percentage points (post-WW2) fewer citations of papers by female relative to male academics. These gender gaps in academic output reiterated current evidence from Mexico, presented at the conference by Diana Terrazas-Santamaria, showing that women are associated with lower citation rates. Terrazas-Santamaria attribute the low rates to gender differences in both the number of publications and duration of academic careers.
The work by Iaria, Schwarz and Waldinger (2022) further showcase the gender disparities in career advancement in academia, which similarly decreased over the years. At the point of the greatest gender disparity, women required an approximately 6 percentage points better publication record to have the same promotion probabilities as their male counterparts.
The Leaky, Dry Pipeline
In the conference’s second keynote, Sarah Smith highlighted how academia, much like other professional occupations, exhibits a leaky pipeline. This is a phenomenon characterized by a declining representation of women as they ascend through the academic hierarchy. When examining specific fields, Smith’s results indicate that the gender disparities in economics much more closely align with those observed in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) than other social science disciplines. Furthermore, the economics’ field illustrate a significant lack of diversity among its new entrants. This phenomenon, referred to as the dry pipeline, generates future cohort implications, as they result in less demographically representative cohorts from which future professors can be recruited (see Stewart et al., 2009).
The cross-disciplinary comparison of the dry pipeline addressed in the keynote, contest the mathematical rigor of economics as a barrier to entry, as mathematics itself demonstrated higher women representation at A-level and undergraduate levels. In a following discussion panel, which focused on ensuring a fair start in academia (comprised of Yaroslava Babych, Alessandra Casarico, Federica Braccioli and Marta Gmurek, and moderated by Maria Perrotta Berlin), the panellists acknowledged that deeply engrained social expectations, gender trained behaviours and a lack of awareness constitute some of the persistent hindrances to the (early) involvement of women in specific fields, and the academic profession in general.
Additional factors influencing the gender balance in recruitment and promotion are gendered references, and the presence or absence of shared research interests between candidates and recruitment panels. These themes were extensively investigated in the work presented by Alessandra Casarico on the conference’s opening day. Specifically, results from collaborative work with Audinga Baltrunaite and Lucia Rizzica, highlight that grindstone words (e.g., “determined”, “hardworking”, etc.) are frequently used in recommendation letters to describe female candidates, while standout words (e.g., “excellent”, “strongest” etc.) typify male candidates’ references. Compared to their male counterparts, women are also shown to be more inclined to accentuate personality traits when serving as referees. This added to a broader literature demonstrating that female candidates’ recommendation letters frequently exhibit brevity, raise doubts, carry a weak tone, and emphasize candidates’ interpersonal skills and personality traits rather than their ability. Moreover, separate results from Casarico’s work (with Piera Bello and Debora Nozza) illustrate that research similarity between the recruiting committee and the candidate predict the likelihood of recruitment. The authors argue that the relationship is indicative of a bias against women if – as shown by the authors – women are less likely to be the candidates with the highest similarity.
In her presentation, Anne Sophie Lassen offered a different factor that may contribute to the attrition in the pipeline: the influence of parenthood on academic careers. Results from her work (with Ria Ivandić) indicate that while parenthood does not significantly influence graduation rates, it extends doctoral studies by an average of 7 months for women. Moreover, Lassen highlighted a declining trend of remaining in academia after becoming a parent, particularly pronounced among women.
More Areas of Imbalance
The remaining conference presentations and panel discussions explored additional domains of gender imbalances within academia. Iga Magda showcased evidence from her joint work with Jacek Bieliński, Marzena Feldy and Anna Knapińska of gender differences in remuneration during the early stages of an academic career, substantiating a gap within a year of graduation. These disparities endure throughout respondents’ careers and are contingent on the field of study – largest among engineering and technology graduates and lowest among those from the humanities and arts fields. Furthermore, it was observed that productivity plays a negligible role in the identified pay gaps, as its impact is similar for both genders.
The panel composed of Eleni Chatzichritou, Marta Łazarowicz-Kowalik, Jesper Roine and Joanna Wolszczak-Derlacz, and moderated by Michał Myck, deliberated on exposed disparities in the application for, and the success rates in attaining research funding in Poland and Europe – as seen in the National Science Centre (NCN) and the European Research Council research grants, respectively. The discussion highlighted how quantitative measures used in the allocation of research funding are riddled with subjective criteria that often benefit male academics. They also recognized how quests to allocate funds to the most successful candidate inadvertently penalize women with career breaks.
Another panel including Lev Lvovskiy, Carlo Schwarz, Sarah Smith, Marieke Bos and Joanna Tyrowicz, and moderated by Pamela Campa, lauded the growing objective data shedding light on gender inequalities in academia. The panellists discussed current challenges in identifying and quantifying aspects of gender disparities. For instance, currently used proxies do not allow to capture more subtle disparities, like microaggressions faced by female academics from students – emphasizing the need for more individual level survey data.
The panels were further enriched by personal anecdotes and filled with retrospective advice shared by both early career and established academics. To contextualize the above, a few cases from the FREE Network countries follow.
Evidence From Within the FREE Network
Yaroslava Babych shared insights concerning women in higher education in Georgia and other countries of the South Caucasus. Preliminary findings of her study confirm the presence of gender inequality in academia, evident in disparities in access to higher education as well as gender segregation across both fields and countries. Notably, women comprise a majority of the graduates in bachelor’s and master’s of art programs, whereas higher research-level programs such as doctors of science, and top echelons of the academic hierarchy remain predominantly male. Moreover, female academic output is found to be lower than that of male counterparts.
Lev Lvovskiy discussed the case of Belarus, highlighting the influence of the Soviet legacy. A significant factor linked to this legacy is exploiting university enrolment to circumvent compulsory conscription of men, allowing male university admissions to serve a secondary purpose beyond acquiring knowledge. This increases the perceived opportunity cost of enrolling a woman. Lvovskiy further documented the academic trajectories of Belarusians, revealing a majority of women at college and doctoral levels, but being underrepresented among doctoral graduates. The results further indicate significant cross-disciplinary gender disparities, with humanities having close to 80 percent women representation and engineering and information and technology (IT) fields having less than 30 percent women representation.
Monika Oczkowska provided evidence of gender disparities in Poland. Findings from the country reveal an overrepresentation of women graduates from bachelor through doctoral levels, and relative parity at post-doctoral level, but lower proportions at habilitation, associate professor, and professor levels. These general results confirm the higher detail findings presented by Karolina Goraus-Tanska on the first day of the conference. Results from Goraus-Tanska’s work (with Jacek Lewkowicz and Krzysztof Szczygielski) suggest that the drop-off among female academics from habilitation levels is not attributed to higher output expectations for women, but rather stems from the impact of parenthood.
Oczkowska further demonstrated that female academics in Poland are characterized by fewer international collaborations and lower levels of international output. Polish female academics were also showcased to engage in more international mobility during their doctoral studies relative to men, with the converse holding true after obtaining a doctoral degree. A potential explanation for this mobility decline among female academics, could be the increased burden of familial responsibilities at the post-doctoral and higher levels. Moreover, fewer women were reported to have applied for NCN grants and were underrepresented among the beneficiaries of these calls. Lastly, female academics in Poland record significantly lower total project costs relative to their male counterparts.
‘Plugging’ the Leak
In light of the aforementioned, what measures can be taken to address the gender imbalances in academia? As summarized by Sarah Smith, early initiatives have involved tracking women representation (e.g., in admissions, progression, hiring, etc.) within departments and/or institutions to identify where in the pipeline their progress is impeded. Attempted initiatives include formulation of seminar guidelines to overcome unfair experiences, as well as using gender-blind recruiting and objective hiring criteria to equalize hiring opportunities. Some other efforts, such as diverse recruitment panels have been unsuccessfully adopted, as they seem to embolden hostile male recruiters and load female panellists with unrewarded administration tasks. Conversely, mentoring has helped women build networks, publish more, and advance professionally. Awareness raising campaigns have reduced disparities in teaching evaluations and remain vital in addressing the dry pipeline and both transparent workload allocation and rewarding of administrative tasks have been shown to reduce promotion gaps in academia. In addition to the above, initiatives such as fostering gender-neutral networking opportunities, collaborations and a more diverse faculty were also deliberated during the conference.
Concluding Remarks
The conference advanced dialogue on societal and structural constraints to gender equality in academia and provided a platform to exchange ideas on how the shared objective of a more inclusive and equitable academic environment can be achieved. While the challenges remain abundant, and the costs associated not always negligible, it remains crucial to assess achievements, such as those resulting from mentoring and awareness intervention initiatives and recognize that further opportunities to enhance equity within the profession exist.
Additional Material
Seminar Participants – short bios
Conference Programme 22.06.2023
Conference Participants – short bios
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.
Economic and Social Context of Domestic Violence: Research Shared at the 2022 FROGEE Conference
This brief summarizes the research papers presented at the 2022 FROGEE conference “Economic and Social Context of Domestic Violence”, which took place on May 11, 2022. It was organized by the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) together with the Centre for Economic Analysis (CenEA) and the FREE Network. Two additional briefs related to the conference are published on the FREE policy briefs website – a brief on gender-based violence in conflict based on the panel discussion, and another sharing preliminary results from the recent FROGEE survey.
While the concerns about domestic violence (DV) and intimate partner violence (IPV) have been gaining prominence since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, they were further exacerbated by the devastating events happening in Ukraine. Times of crisis or conflict makes the issue more severe, however, gender-based violence is sadly prevalent at normal times too, and a major portion of it is DV and IPV. Limiting violence towards women requires understanding the determinants of DV and IPV and the channels through which they take effect. With this in mind, the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) together with the Centre for Economic Analysis (CenEA) and the FREE Network invited researchers to present their work relating to the economic and social context of domestic violence. This brief provides an account of what was shared at the conference.
Prevention of Domestic Violence: What Works and What Doesn’t?
Three presented studies geared toward evaluating policies aimed to limit violence against women.
Dick Durevall shared his findings on IPV and national policy programs in Colombia, focusing on the laws and policies implemented based on the UN campaign “UNiTE to End Violence Against Women” between 2010 and 2015. To evaluate the effect of these policies, he adopts a differences-in-differences design and compares provinces that had a gender policy before this renewed effort with those that did not. This builds on the idea that provinces that had an IPV policy strategy before UN recommendations were adopted are more efficient in implementing new such policies. It is found that self-reported physical violence falls from 20% to 16% between 2010 and 2015 in provinces that had IPV policies while this number remained at 18% in those that did not. While sexual violence decreased in both groups, provinces with IPV policies experienced a stronger reduction.
Accurate reporting is a key issue when it comes to IPV since it makes up the foundation for designing effective policy. Due to long-lasting and tiresome judicial procedures, threats, social barriers, or emotional costs, victims might choose not to report. Looking at the introduction of specialized IPV courts in Spain, Marta Martínez-Matute presented her paper on how institutions shape reporting. Bestowed with specialized staff, victim-oriented resources, and a swifter judicial process, these courts are specifically designed to deal with IPV cases. Martínez-Matute and co-author investigate if these resources make women more prone to report IPV by exploiting the sequential rollout of specialized courts. They use yearly court-level data on individual IPV cases between 2005 and 2018 in a staggered difference-in-differences framework with matched control districts. The results show that the introduction of an IPV court in a judicial district reduces the length of the judiciary process by 61% and increases the reported number of IPV cases by 22%. Ensuring that this increase is not fully driven by a rise in false reports, it is found that the share of dismissed IPV cases remains unchanged. Further, it is shown that the increase is driven by less severe IPV cases and not aggravated IPV offenses or homicides.
A distinctive feature of DV crimes is that there is a high degree of recidivism, with many women experiencing repeated violence from the same partner. However, little is known about how police should respond to such crimes to ensure safety to those victimized. From one perspective police arrests deter repeated DV crimes since they incapacitate perpetrators and allow police to investigate while offering safety to victims. However, some argue that this safety is merely temporary and that DV arrests might trigger offenders to retaliate against victims, leading to increased long-term DV. Against this reasoning, Victoria Endl-Geyer presented a study on the relationship between police arrests and DV dynamics in the UK. It uses highly granular administrative data on the population of DV incidents in the West Midlands which allows the researchers to observe the detailed information on the incidents’ timing and location as well as on police officers and their crime scene responses. It adopts an instrumental variables approach using the dispatch team’s previous propensity to arrest (measured as the weighted average arrest rate of officers in the team) as an instrument. The results provide evidence consistent with a deterrence effect. While regular OLS estimates show an insignificant impact, the IV results indicate that an on-scene arrest decreases repeat DV incidents by 25-26 percentage points. They find that the effect is the same when restricting the sample to incidents reported by a third party, supporting that this effect is not driven by a change in reporting behavior.
Factors of Domestic Violence and its Mechanisms
Other studies presented at the conference focused less on policy assessment and more on identifying the determinants of IPV and DV.
Losing or obtaining a job causes a shock in the intra-relationship dynamics and changes the economic power balance between spouses. Deniz Sanin presented her paper on the DV effect of women’s employment in the context of Rwanda. Following the government-initiated National Coffee Strategy in 2002, the number of coffee mills in Rwanda increased from 5 to 213 over the course of ten years. This natural experiment allows studying the effect of having a paid job as it captures the shift from unpaid labor on a family farm to paid work on a mill, keeping job-related skills constant. Using survey data on both DV and labor market outcomes along with administrative data on DV hospitalizations, the study adopts a staggered difference-in-differences strategy and compares women before and after mill opening as well as within and outside of the catchment area (a buffer zone surrounding the mill). The results show that upon mill opening, the probability of working for cash increases and that of self-reporting domestic violence in the past 12 months decreases by 26% (relative to the baseline of 0.35). During the harvest months, the only period of the year in which the mills operate, hospitals are significantly less likely to admit DV patients compared to the month before the harvest season, suggesting that the initial results are not driven by reporting bias. Looking at the mechanisms, she finds evidence supporting an increased bargaining power explanation – women in catchment areas who are exposed to mill opening are more likely to have a bigger say in household decisions such as larger household purchases and contraception usage. Increases in husbands’ earnings and decreased exposure are also ruled out as possible channels since a decline in DV is also found among spouses where the husband works in a different occupation with no change in earnings.
Rather than studying the impact of women’s employment status, Cristina Clerici shared a related paper that focuses on male unemployment. To investigate its effect on IPV, the study exploits the exogenous shock to employment caused by COVID-19 containment measures in Uganda. The authors collect individual-level data via phone surveys on the incidence of IPV among food vendors, including information on husbands’ sector of employment. To identify a causal DV effect of male employment exit, the authors distinguish between two groups of women with similar pre-lockdown experiences of abuse: those with spouses employed in sectors where operations were halted by COVID-19 lockdowns (construction workers, taxi drivers, etc.) and those with spouses who were unaffected (food vendors, farmers, etc.). The results show that male unemployment increases the probability of experiencing physical violence by 4.9 percentage points, corresponding to a 45% increase relative to the average likelihood. The effect cannot be explained by increased exposure (the man being more at home) – affected and unaffected women spend on average an equal number of nights in the market, which could be used as a coping mechanism. This suggests it is the change in unemployment status itself that drives the increase in DV.
While most of the literature on domestic abuse has documented that its drivers often come from changing life conditions of the victim or perpetrator, there is broad anecdotal evidence that exogenous events can lead to exacerbations in domestic violence as well. Ria Ivandic presented her paper that documents a causal link between major football games and domestic violence in England. The authors use a dataset on the universe of calls and crimes in the Greater Manchester area. The data provides a time series on the incidence of different types of domestic abuse with information on the timing, relationship to the accused, and individual characteristics of the victim and perpetrator, including whether the perpetrator was under the influence of alcohol at the time of the incident. They adopt an event study approach focusing on the hours surrounding a game and document a substitution effect in that the two-hour duration of a football game is associated with a 5% decline in DV incidents. However, following the game, the initial decrease is offset as DV incidents start increasing and culminate after 10-12 hours, eventually leading to an aggregate positive effect which constitutes a 2.8% hourly increase on days when games are played.
The authors argue that alcohol consumption, rather than emotions, is the main mechanism through which domestic violence is affected by sporting events. Supporting this hypothesis, they first find that the outcome of the game or the associated element of surprise (measured using the ex-ante probability of winning a game through betting markets) does not affect the probability of DV occurring. Second, they show that the increase in DV following a game is solely driven by an increase in alcohol-related DV incidents, while those committed by non-alcoholized men remain constant. Further strengthening this finding, it is shown that for games scheduled early in the day, when perpetrators can start drinking sooner and continue throughout the day, they find a significant increase in DV incidents committed by alcoholized perpetrators while this is not the case for late-scheduled games.
The Role of Women’s Empowerment
In the literature on gender-based violence, there is a common disposition to think about women’s empowerment as a central element of DV mitigation. However, theories point in opposite directions making the effect of women’s economic empowerment rather unclear. On one end of the spectrum, there are bargaining theories indicating that an increase in women’s employment opportunities or income should have a negative effect on DV by creating outside options or increasing the bargaining power in a relationship. At the other end, there are backslash theories arguing that enhancing women’s financial empowerment may further exacerbate violence by undermining the role of the breadwinner, triggering male partners to retaliate with the use of violence in order to restore the power balance. Going in the same direction, theories of instrumental violence point towards that the male partner might also use violence to extract resources.
In her keynote lecture, Bilge Erten outlined the evidence relating to DV and women’s empowerment and discussed to what extent and in which contexts these theories are supported.
The evidence of a positive or negative effect of empowerment may depend on which aspect of it is studied. Education is seen as an important one because it has the potential to raise women’s self-awareness of IPV, increase the likelihood of matching with a well-educated partner (which is negatively correlated to abusive behavior), and improve labor market outcomes. Although evidence is scarce in this area, Erten shared her own findings on the causal effect of education reform on IPV in Turkey. In line with instrumental violence theories, it is found that, while women in cohorts affected by the reform performed better in the labor market, they experienced more psychological violence and financial control behavior, and there was no sign of an effect on DV attitudes, partner-match quality or marriage decisions.
What we know about women’s empowerment and DV is also different across countries. When it comes to the effect of employment, findings from developed countries are generally consistent with bargaining theory explanations while what is found in the developing world is more mixed. This is also the case for studies on unilateral divorce laws – while a negative effect on IPV has been documented in the United States, a positive effect of these laws is found in Mexico.
Assessing the literature on the income effect leads to a somewhat ambiguous verdict too. Although generally, most studies confirm that overall violence declines with women’s income, there is often heterogeneity in the effect. It has for instance been found that the sign of the income effect from cash transfers on DV changes from negative to positive as the size of the transfer increases.
Finally, Erten provided some important policy considerations. There is evidently a widespread backlash problem that can arise after a policy intervention of the types discussed above. Policymakers need to think more about monitoring and protecting victims from more violence when implementing such a policy. Further research assessing post-intervention is also needed to identify interventions that are the most effective in minimizing domestic violence. In particular, a change in broad social norms around gender roles should be a desirable outcome, to the effect that a new, improved status of women in society and in the household becomes more culturally acceptable and needs not lead to backlash. In the case of expressive violence (that is not a rational, calculated response but rather a compulsion in the heat of the moment), mental health interventions should also be considered.
Concluding Remarks
As highlighted by the 2022 FROGEE conference, domestic violence not only has been put in the spotlight following the pandemic or the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, but is widespread across the globe in regular conditions too. The mixed findings shared at the conference suggested that policies limiting gender-based violence should be designed with respect to the cultural and social setting where they are to be implemented as the heterogeneity is very high across contexts. Although research has come a long way, the conference stressed that there is much more to be done, in terms of not only knowledge but also the political will and commitment to seriously address the issue of gender-based violence.
The presentations held at the conference can be viewed at this link and a separate policy brief based on the panel discussion on gender-based violence in times of conflict can be found here.
List of Speakers
- Cristina Clerici, Ph.D. Student in Economics at the Stockholm School of Economics.
- Dick Durevall, Professor at the Department of Economics, University of Gothenburg.
- Victoria Endl-Geyer, Doctoral Student at the IFO Institute.
- Bilge Erten, Associate Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Institute for Health Equity and Social Justice Research at Northeastern University.
- Ria Ivandic, Associate Researcher at the London School of Economics.
- Marta Martínez-Matute, Assistant Professor at the Department of Economic Analysis at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.
- Deniz Sanin, Ph.D. Candidate at Georgetown University.
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.
Gender-Based Violence in Conflict
The eruption of war exposes women to increased gender-based violence, in the immediate conflict area as well as in the countries where they seek refuge. Acknowledging the specific conflict-related risks that women face is important, in order to target interventions, especially considering that the actors that sit at peace negotiation tables are predominantly or exclusively men. In this policy brief, we discuss the implications of conflict for gender-based violence, with a special focus on the ongoing war in Ukraine. We also outline some policy interventions that might help mitigate the risks that women face, holding those responsible to account, and building a more gender-equal society from the reconstruction efforts. Our discussion draws from existing academic literature and inputs from the special panel session on conflict during the FROGEE conference “Economic and Social Context of Domestic Violence”.
Gender-Based Violence During Conflicts
During war, as in peacetime, women are exposed to different forms of violence, and to a different extent, as compared to men. In other words, there are gender-specific aspects of conflict-related violence, both in immediate conflict areas and in the places where affected populations might seek refuge.
One form of violence against women in conflict areas is sexual violence and rapes perpetrated by combatants. Scholars and policy analysts tend to portray this violence as a weapon of war (Eriksson and Stern, 2013), meaning that it is a way of humiliating and demoralizing the enemy as individuals and as communities. Differently put, the narrative that portrays sexual violence as, for instance, the consequence of unmet sexual needs among soldiers is increasingly less accepted. Sexual violence against women perpetrated by armed forces in conflict areas is tragically prevalent. While proper quantification of the phenomenon is hard for obvious reasons, it is estimated for example that at least 500,000 women were raped during the Rwandan genocide, and 50,000 during the war in Bosnia (Guarnieri and Tur-Prats, 2022).
Another form of gender-based violence in conflict is that women who are uprooted by war tend to confront a high risk of sexual violence during their journey away from home and in the places where they seek refuge. Vu et al. (2014) estimate, through meta-analysis, that approximately one in five refugees or displaced women in complex humanitarian settings experienced sexual violence. The study also highlights the need for more data to shed light on the characteristics of perpetrators. The presence of aid workers among them appears to persist through several humanitarian crises (Reis, 2021).
Further, women and children fleeing war areas are vulnerable to the risk of trafficking and exploitation for sexual or other work (as highlighted in the FROGEE conference panel). Traffickers and criminal organizations tend to exploit the combination of a mass movement of people in precarious economic situations and the decreased scrutiny generated by the humanitarian emergency.
Finally, war heightens the risk of intimate partner violence (IPV) in conflict areas as well as among refugees and displaced individuals, by causing stress, trauma, economic hardship and increased substance abuse, all of which lead to deterioration in mental health and the quality of relationships (Conference panel). An actual or perceived sense of impunity can also undermine victims’ propensity to report IPV at such a time. A systematic review of the published literature on gender-based violence in conflict finds that estimated rates of IPV across most studies are much higher than the rates of rape and sexual violence perpetrated outside the home (Stark and Ager, 2011).
The consequences of conflict on IPV can be long-lasting. Evidence from post-genocide Rwanda shows that women who married after the conflict were more likely to be victims of spousal abuse; skewed sex ratios that reduced women’s bargaining power in the marriage market appear to be the relevant channel (La Mattina 2017). Another important factor is posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among veterans: a study of US military personnel shows that assignment to combat in the Global War on Terrorism is associated with higher incidence of domestic violence and lower relationship quality (Cesur and Sabia, 2016). The increased availability of small weapons can also lead to more frequent or more violent instances of domestic abuse (Conference panel).
The War in Ukraine
Reports from the US State Department and Amnesty international document episodes of sexual violence from armed conflict actors in Donetsk and Luhansk since the start of the conflict in 2014 (Amnesty International, 2020). Both Russian and Ukrainian military were involved, speaking to the tragedy that the population close to the “contact area” have witnessed since 2014.
At present, growing evidence is emerging that Ukrainians, especially but not exclusively women and girls, are victims of rape, gang-rape and forced nudity perpetrated by Russian military troops invading the country (United Nations). It is notoriously difficult to collect and verify data and facts on sexual violence during wartime, but these early accounts, and the experience from previous conflicts, call for a high level of scrutiny and readiness to help. Research also suggests some potential factors that aggravate the prevalence of sexual violence in conflict. Guarnieri and Tur-Prats (2020) show that armed actors who hold more gender-unequal norms are more likely to be perpetrators of sexual violence, and that the incidence of sexual violence is highest when the parts in conflict hold gender norms that differ substantially (Guarnieri and Tur-Prats, 2022). Survey data show that the share of people who appear to hold gender-unequal norms in Russia remained high over the years, based on questions on the effectiveness of women and men as political or business leaders (Figures 1 and 2), or the desirability of women earning more than their husbands (not shown).
Figure 1. Men make better political leaders than women do, % agreement
Source: World Value Survey
Figure 2. Men make better business executives than women do, % agreement
Source: World Value Survey
Evidence on the evolution of norms in Ukraine is more mixed (see Figures 1 and 2). All in all, surveys of gender-role attitudes suggest that gender stereotypes persist in Russian society, but it is not obvious that the prevailing gender norms are starkly different between Russia and Ukraine. On the other hand, attitudes toward IPV in the two countries might be evolving differently, at least among the respective elites, based on the fact that legislation on domestic violence recently changed in opposite direction in the two countries. Specifically, Russia decriminalized minor forms of domestic violence in early 2017. Conversely, Ukraine strengthened the legal response to domestic violence in early 2019, in particular making minor but systematic domestic violence criminally punishable, and extending criminal punishment beyond physical violence to include emotional and economic violence.
As a consequence of the war, almost 13 million Ukrainians have left their homes since Russia invaded on Feb. 24, 2022, according to the United Nations. Almost all of them are women and children, since men and boys aged 18 to 60 are required to stay in Ukraine to defend the country. Women traveling alone with their children, especially when fleeing to foreign countries where they often have no connections, are clearly at risk of assault and exploitation. Such risk is heightened by the exceptional speed of the refugee influx, whereby an impromptu response from the host countries is by necessity reliant on individual independent participation. Private hosts have spontaneously been opening their homes to accommodate for days or even weeks Ukrainians fleeing the war. Proper vetting of these offers is made difficult by the sheer number of people who are being welcomed in bordering countries, for instance Poland, as well as by the exceptional response from private individuals. Within a little more than a month from the start of this crisis there had already been a few episodes of sexual violence against Ukrainian refugees in their host countries (specifically in Poland and Germany).
While the current death toll in the war in Ukraine is unlikely to lead to dramatically skewed sex-ratios, this aspect might become more relevant as events evolve, in light also of the fact that nearly the universe of those who fled the country so far consists of women and children.
Finally, in the post-conflict period, the presence of small weapons, which have been made available to civilians to defend the country, is an additional risk factor for IPV (Conference panel).
What Can Be Done?
Academics, international organizations, activists and female politicians from Ukraine have made specific requests to improve the system of protection and accountability in the face of sexual violence against women living in or fleeing from conflict zones. These suggestions include ensuring that the system of transitional justice that will govern the post-conflict period establishes proper investigation and punishment of every form of sexual violence performed by armed actors during the war. To this end, some steps have already been taken. The UN Resolution in favor of the creation of an International Commission of Inquiry refers explicitly to the need to recognize the gender dimension of violations and abuses.
Beyond the horizon of the war, the safety of Ukrainian women in their homes relies on the protection offered by State legislation against domestic violence. In this respect, the Ukrainian government has recently taken a few measures in what the international community deems to be the “right direction”. A very important reform taken in the summer of 2021 allows for the military to be prosecuted for domestic violence on a general basis rather than on the basis of the disciplinary statute as it was before. This is especially important in light of the findings of increased risk of domestic violence in families of veterans (Cesur and Sabia, 2016). However, some critical aspects remain. In the current context, a crucial factor might be the limit of 6 months to prosecute the crime from the occurrence of the violence. An extension of such a period at a time when the normal functioning of many institutions is suspended or subject to delays can attenuate the perception of impunity that the exceptionality of the circumstances creates.
When it comes to refugees, there is as mentioned a need for better vetting of private hosts, although the urgency of action that the current circumstances require makes this a particularly challenging task. State effort in this direction has been complemented by civil society initiatives. For example, in Sweden, Facebook groups that lined up to coordinate the offer of housing are now organizing themselves to create a system for verifying housing and hosts.
Ukrainian politicians have also asked Western countries to be prepared to offer expertise on how to support survivors of rape and other sexual violence in conflict.
Other experts recommend reliance on cultural and linguistic mediators to help refugee women access services for victims of IPV that are already offered by local actors in their temporary host country (Conference panel).
In the longer term, guaranteeing economic safety for refugees is also an effective measure to reduce their vulnerability to exploitation from sex-traffickers and criminal organizations.
Finally, yet importantly, the involvement of women in peace negotiation processes should be sought after. Echoing the discussion on women’s scarcity in leadership positions in peacetime, the gender-unequal composition of peace delegations poses an issue of equality, representativeness, and efficiency (Bertrand 2018). Interestingly, it has been noted that a more truthful narrative of war, which recognizes women’s role not only as victims but also as perpetrators (and the converse for men, although proportions are clearly unbalanced in both cases), might help pave the way for higher female representation at negotiation tables (Conference panel). Relatedly, the European Institute for Gender Equality proposes gender mainstreaming of all policies and programs involved in conflict resolution processes (EIGE). The international community should also consider gender mainstreaming of reconstruction programs, to help build a more gender-equal post-conflict Ukraine.
References
- Amnesty International. (2020). Not a Private Matter. Domestic and Sexual Violence against Women in Eastern Ukraine.
- Baaz, M. E., and Stern, M. (2013). Sexual violence as a weapon of war?: Perceptions, prescriptions, problems in the Congo and beyond. Bloomsbury Publishing.
- Bertrand, M. (2018). Coase lecture–the glass ceiling. Economica, 85(338), 205-231.
- Cesur, R., and Sabia, J. J. (2016). When war comes home: The effect of combat service on domestic violence. Review of Economics and Statistics, 98(2), 209-225.
- Guarnieri, E., and Tur-Prats, A. (2022). Cultural distance and conflict-related sexual violence. Mimeo
- Reis, C. (2021). Sexual abuse during humanitarian operations still happens. What must be done to end it. The Conversation, October 5 2021. https://theconversation.com/sexual-abuse-during-humanitarian-operations-still-happens-what-must-be-done-to-end-it-169223
- Stark, L. and Ager, A. (2011). A systematic review of prevalence studies of gender-based violence in complex emergencies. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 12(3), pp.127-134.
- Vu, A., Adam, A., Wirtz, A., Pham, K., Rubenstein, L., Glass, N., Beyrer, C. and Singh, S. (2014). The prevalence of sexual violence among female refugees in complex humanitarian emergencies: a systematic review and meta-analysis. PLoS currents, 6.
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.
Understanding the Economic and Social Context of Gender-based and Domestic Violence in Central and Eastern Europe – Preliminary Survey Evidence
This brief presents preliminary findings from a cross-country survey on perceptions and prevalence of domestic and gender-based violence conducted in September 2021 in eight countries: Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Latvia, Poland, Russia, Sweden and Ukraine. We discuss the design and content of the study and present initial information on selected topics that were covered in the survey. The collected data has been used in three studies presented at the FROGEE Conference on “Economic and Social Context of Domestic Violence” and offers a unique resource to study gender-based violence in the region.
While the COVID-19 pandemic has amplified the academic and policy interest in the causes and consequences of domestic violence, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has tragically reminded us about the gender dimension of war. There is no doubt that a gender lens is a necessary perspective to understand and appreciate the full consequences of these two ongoing crises.
The tragic reason behind the increased attention given to domestic violence during the COVID-19 lockdowns is the substantial evidence that gender-based violence has intensified to such an extent that the United Nations raised the alarm about a “shadow pandemic” of violence against women and girls (UN Women on-line link). Already before the pandemic, one in three women worldwide had experienced physical or sexual violence, usually at the hands of an intimate partner, and this number has only been increasing. The tragic reports from the military invasion of Ukraine concerning violence against women and children, as well as information on the heightened risks faced by war refugees from Ukraine, most of whom are women, should only intensify our efforts to better understand the background behind these processes and study the potential policy solutions to limit them to a minimum in the current and future crises.
The most direct consequences of gender-based and domestic violence – to the physical and mental health of the victims – are clearly of the highest concern and are the leading arguments in favour of interventions aimed at limiting the scale of violence. One should remember though, that the consequences and the related social costs of gender-based and domestic violence are far broader, and need not be caused by direct acts of physical violence. Gender-based and domestic violence can take the form of psychological pressure, limits on individual freedoms, or access to financial resources within households. As research in recent decades demonstrates, such forms of abuse also have significant consequences for the psychological well-being, social status, and professional development of its victims. All these outcomes are associated with not only high individual costs, but also with substantial social and economic costs to our societies.
This policy brief presents an outline of a survey conducted in eight countries aimed at better understanding the socio-economic context of gender-based violence. The survey, developed by the FREE Network of independent research institutes, has a regional focus on Central and Eastern Europe, with Sweden being an interesting benchmark country. The data was collected in September 2021 in Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Latvia, Poland, Russia, Sweden and Ukraine. The socio-economic situation of all these countries irrevocably changed with the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the ongoing war, and its dramatic consequences. The world’s attention focused on the unspeakable violence committed by the Russian forces in Ukraine, the persecution in Belarus and Russia of their own citizens who were protesting against the invasion, and the challenges other neighbouring countries have faced as a result of an unprecedented wave of Ukrainian refugees. This change, on the one hand, calls for a certain distance with which we should judge the survey data and the derived results. On the other hand, the data may serve as a unique resource to support the analysis of the pre-war conditions in these countries with the aim to understand the background driving forces behind this dramatic crisis. In as much as the gender lens is necessary to comprehend the full scale of the consequences of both the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, it will be equally indispensable in the process of post-war development and reconciliation once peace is again restored.
Survey Design, Countries, and Samples
The survey was conducted in eight countries in September 2021 through as a telephone (CATI) survey using the list assisted random digit dialling (LA-RDD) method covering both cell phones and land-lines, and the sampling was carried out in such a way as to make the final sample representative of the respective populations by gender and three age group (18-39; 40-54; 55+). The collected samples varied from 925 to 1000 individuals. The same questionnaire initially prepared as a generic English version was fielded in all eight countries (in the respective national languages). The only deviations from the generic version were related to the education categories and to a set of final questions implemented in Latvia, Russia and Ukraine with a focus on the evaluation of national IPV legislation.
Table 1 presents some basic sample statistics, while Figure 1 shows the unweighted age and gender compositions in each country. The proportion of women in the sample varies between 49.4% in Sweden and 55.0% in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. The average sample age is between 43 (Armenia) and 51 (Sweden), while the proportion of individuals with higher education is between 29.3% in Belarus and 55.4% in Georgia. The highest proportion of respondents living in rural areas could be found in Armenia at 62.9%, while the lowest was in Georgia at 24.1%. Figure 1 illustrates good coverage across age groups for both men and women.
Table 1. FROGEE Survey: samples and basic demographics
Source: FROGEE Survey on Domestic and Gender-Based Violence.
Figure 1. FROGEE Survey: gender and age distributions
Source: FROGEE Survey on Domestic and Gender-Based Violence.
Socio-economic Conditions and Other Background Characteristics
To be able to examine the relationship between different aspects of domestic and gender-based violence to the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents, an extensive set of questions concerning the demographic composition of their household and their material conditions were asked at the beginning of the interview. These questions included information about partnership history and family structure, the size of the household and living conditions, education and labour market status (of the respondent and his/her partner) and general questions concerning material wellbeing. In Figure 2 we show a summary of two of the latter set of questions – the proportion of men and women who find it difficult or very difficult to make ends meet (Figure 2A) and the proportion who declared that the financial situation of their household deteriorated in the last two years, i.e. since September 2019, which can be used as an indicator of the material consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. We can see that the difficulties in making ends meet are by far lowest in Sweden, and slightly lower in the other EU countries (Latvia and Poland). The differences are less pronounced with regard to the implication of the pandemic, but also in this case respondents in Sweden seem to have been least affected.
Figure 2. Making ends meet and the consequences of COVID-19
a. Difficulties in making ends meet
b. Material conditions deteriorated since 2019
Source: FROGEE Survey on Domestic and Gender-Based Violence.
Perceptions and Incidence of Domestic and Gender-Based Violence and Abuse
Frequency of differential treatment and abuse
The set of questions concerning domestic and gender-based violence started with an initial module related to the different treatment of men and women, with respondents asked to identify how often they witnessed certain behaviours aimed toward women. The questions covered aspects such as women being treated “with less courtesy than men”, being “called names or insulted for being a woman” and women being “the target of jokes of sexual nature” or receiving “unwanted sexual advances from a man she doesn’t know”, and the respondents were to evaluate if in the last year they have witnessed such behaviours on a scale from never, through rarely, sometimes, often, to very often. We present the proportion of respondents answering “often” or “very often” to two of these questions in Figure 3A (“People have acted as if they think women are not smart”) and 3B (“A woman has been the target of jokes of a sexual nature”). We find significant variation across these two dimensions of differential treatment, and we generally find that women are more sensitive to perceiving such treatment. It is interesting to note that the proportion of women who declared witnessing differential treatment in Sweden is very high in comparison to for example Latvia or Belarus, which, as we shall see below, does not correspond to the proportion of women (and men) witnessing more violent types of behaviour against women.
Figure 3. Frequency of differential treatment (often or very often)
a. People have acted as if they think women are not smart
b. A woman has been the target of jokes of a sexual nature
Source: FROGEE Survey on Domestic and Gender-Based Violence.
Questions on the frequency of witnessing physical abuse were also asked in relation to the scale of witnessed behaviour. Here respondents were once again asked to say how often “in their day-to-day life” they have witnessed specific behaviours. These included such types of abuse as: a woman being “threatened by a man”, “slapped, hit or punched by a man”, or “sexually abused or assaulted by a man”. The proportion of respondents who say that they have witnessed such behaviour with respect to two of the questions from this section are presented in Figure 4. In Figure 4A we show the proportion of men and women who have witnessed a woman being “slapped, hit or punched” (sometimes, often or very often), while in Figure 4B being “touched inappropriately without her consent”. Relative to the perceptions of differential treatment the incidence of a woman being hit or punched (4A) declared by the respondents seems more intuitive when considered against the overall international statistics of gender equality. The proportions are lowest in Sweden and Poland, and highest in Armenia and Ukraine. However, the perception of inappropriate touching by men with respect to women (Figure 4B) shows a similar extent of such actions across all analysed countries.
Figure 4. Frequency of abuse (sometimes, often or very often)
a. A woman has been slapped, hit or punched by a man
b. A woman has been touched inappropriately, without her consent, by a man
Source: FROGEE Survey on Domestic and Gender-Based Violence.
Perceptions of abuse
The questions concerning the scale of witnessed behaviours were complemented by a module related to the evaluation of certain behaviours from the perspective of their classification as abuse and the degree to which certain types of gender-specific behaviours are acceptable. Thus, for example respondents were asked if they consider “beating (one’s partner) causing severe physical harm” to be an example of abuse within a couple (Figure 5A) or if “prohibition to dress as one likes” represents abuse (Figure 5B). This module included an extensive list of behaviours, such as “forced abortion”, “constant humiliation, criticism”, “restriction of access to financial resources”, etc. As we can see in Figure 6, with respect to the clearest types of abuse – such as physical violence – respondents in all countries were pretty much unanimous in declaring such behaviour to represent abuse. With respect to other behaviours the variation in their evaluation across countries is much greater – for example, while nearly all men and women in Sweden consider prohibiting a partner to dress as he/she likes to be abusive (Figure 5B), only about 57% of women and 36% of men in Armenia share this view.
The questionnaire also included questions specifically focused on the perception of intimate partner violence. These asked respondents if they knew about women who in the last three months were “beaten, slapped or threatened physically by their intimate partner”, and the evaluation of how often intimate partners act physically violent towards their wives.
Figure 5. Perceptions of abuse: are these examples of abuse within a couple?
a. Beating causing severe physical harm
b. Prohibition to dress as one likes
Source: FROGEE Survey on Domestic and Gender-Based Violence.
A further evaluation of attitudes towards violent behaviour was done with respect to the relationship between a husband and wife and his right to hit or beat the wife in reaction to certain behaviours. In Figure 6 we show the distribution of responses regarding the justification for beating one’s wife in reaction to her neglect of the children (6A) or burning food (6B). The questions also covered such behaviour as arguing with her husband, going out without telling him, or refusing to have sex. As we can see in Figure 6, once again we find substantial country variation in the proportion of the samples – both men and women – who justify such violent behaviour within couples. This was particularly the case when respondents were asked about justification of violent behaviour in the case of a woman neglecting the children. In Armenia as many as 30% of men and 22% of women agree that physical beating is justified in those cases. These proportions are manyfold greater than what can be observed in countries such as Latvia, where 3% of men and women agreed that abuse was justifiable under these circumstances, or Sweden, where only 1% of men and women agreed.
Figure 6. Perceptions of abuse: is a husband justified in hitting or beating his wife
a. If she neglects the children
b. If she burns the food
Source: FROGEE Survey on Domestic and Gender-Based Violence.
Seeking help and the legal framework
The final part of the questionnaire focused on the evaluation of different reactions to incidents of domestic and gender-based violence. Respondents were first asked if a woman should seek help from various people and institutions if she is beaten by her partner – respondents were asked if she should seek help from the police, relatives or friends, a psychologist, a legal service or if, in such situations, she does not need help. In Figure 7 we show the proportion of people who agreed with the last statement, i.e. claimed that it is only the couple’s business. The proportions of respondents who declare such an attitude is higher among men than women within each country, and is highest among men in Armenia (48%) and Georgia (25%). Again, these proportions are in stark contrast to men in Sweden, or even Poland, where only 4% and 8% of men agreed, respectively. Nevertheless, looking at the total survey sample, a vast majority believe that a woman who is a victim of domestic violence should seek help outside of her home, indicating that at least some forms of institutionalised support for women are popular measures with most people.
Figure 7. Proportions agreeing that domestic violence is only the couple’s business
Source: FROGEE Survey on Domestic and Gender-Based Violence.
The interview also included questions on the need for specific legislation aimed at punishing intimate partner violence and on the existence of such legislation in the respondents’ countries. The latter questions were extended in three countries – Latvia, Russia and Ukraine – to evaluate the specific sets of regulations implemented recently in these countries and to facilitate an analysis of the role IPV legislation can play in reducing violence within households. Legislation on domestic violence is relatively recent. During the last four decades, though, changes accelerated in this respect around the world. Legislative measures have been introduced in many countries, covering different aspects of preventing, protecting against and prosecuting various forms of violence and abuse that might happen within the marriage or the family. Research strives to offer evaluations on what legal provisions are most effective, in a setting in which statistics and information are still far from perfect, and as a consequence of the dearth of strong evidence the public debate on the matter is often lively. For legislation to have an effect on behaviour through shaping the cost of committing a crime, on the one hand, and the benefit of reporting it or seeking help, on the other, or more indirectly through changing norms in society, information and awareness are key. For how can deterrence be achieved if people do not know what the sanctions are? And how can reporting be encouraged if victims do not know their rights? The evidence on legislation awareness is unfortunately quite scarce. A survey of the criminology field (Nagin, 2013) concludes that this is a major knowledge gap.
Figure 8 shows the proportions of answers to questions concerning the need for and existence of legislation specifically targeted towards intimate partner violence. We can see that while support for such legislation is quite high (Figure 8A), it is generally lower among men (in particular in Armenia, Russia and Belarus). Awareness of existence of such laws, on the other hand, is much lower, and it is particularly low among women. It should be pointed out that all countries have in fact implemented provisions against domestic violence in their criminal code, but only around half of the population, sometimes much fewer, are aware of that.
Figure 8. Need for and awareness of IPV legislation
a. State should have specific legislation aimed at punishing IPV
b. Country has specific legislation aimed at punishing intimate partner violence
Source: FROGEE Survey on Domestic and Gender-Based Violence.
Recent reforms of DV legislation that were implemented in Russia in 2017, in Ukraine in 2019 and in Latvia just a few months ago (at the time of the survey, the changes were at the stage of a proposal) were the subject of the final survey questions in these countries. We find that awareness of these recent reforms is very low in all three countries, and knowledge about the reform content (gauged with the help of a multiple-choice question with three alternative statements) is even lower. Our analysis suggests that gender and family situation are the two factors that most robustly predict support for legislation, while education and age are associated with awareness and knowledge of the reforms. Minority Russian speakers are less aware of the reforms in both Ukraine and Latvia, in Ukraine are also less likely to answer correctly about the content of the reform, and in Latvia are less supportive of DV legislation in general.
Analyses of this type are useful for policy design, to better understand which groups lack relevant knowledge and should be targeted by, for example, information campaigns to combat DV, such as those many governments around the world implemented during the covid-19 pandemic.
Future Work Based on the Survey
The above is just a small sample of the rich source of information that has resulted from conducting the survey. Already from this simple overview we can see some interesting results. There are, for example, clear differences between men and women in perceptions of how common certain types of abusive behaviour are. However, for many questions differences between countries are larger than those between men and women within a country. Interestingly such differences are also different depending on the severity of the abuse or violence. In Sweden the perception of women being victims of less violent abuse is higher than in some other countries where instead some more violent types of abuse are reported as being more common. This could, of course, be due to actual differences in actual events but it is also possible that there are differences in what types of behaviour are considered to represent harassment and abuse in different societies. More careful data work is needed to try to answer questions like this and many others. Currently there are a number of ongoing research projects based on the survey results, three of which will be presented at the FREE-network conference on “Economic and Social Context of Domestic Violence” in Stockholm on May 11, 2022. Our hope is that this work will help in taking actions to prevent gender-based abuse and domestic violence based on a better understanding of underlying cross-country differences in social norms and attitudes and their relation to socio-economic factors.
About FROGEE Policy Briefs
FROGEE Policy Briefs is a special series aimed at providing overviews and the popularization of economic research related to gender equality issues. Debates around policies related to gender equality are often highly politicized. We believe that using arguments derived from the most up to date research-based knowledge would help us build a more fruitful discussion of policy proposals and in the end achieve better outcomes.
The aim of the briefs is to improve the understanding of research-based arguments and their implications, by covering the key theories and the most important findings in areas of special interest to the current debate. The briefs start with short general overviews of a given theme, which are followed by a presentation of country-specific contexts, specific policy challenges, implemented reforms and a discussion of other policy options.
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.
Social Norms, Conspiracy Theories and Vaccine Scepticism: A Snapshot from the First Year of the Covid-19 Pandemic in Poland
In January 2022, Poland experienced the highest rate of SARS-CoV-2 transmission since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Considering the widespread consensus among experts about the efficacy of vaccines in preventing hospitalisation and death resulting from the virus, low vaccination rates and widespread anti-vaccine sentiments in Poland are of great concern. We use data from the DIAGNOZA+ Survey to demonstrate the relationship between various demographic characteristics, opinions around certain gender norms, the propensity for conspiratorial thinking, concern about the pandemic, and vaccine scepticism. While controlling for exogenous demographic characteristics, we measure the strength of the relationship between various beliefs that people hold and how they feel about the COVID-19 vaccine. Our analysis indicates that while respondents who hold more traditional views on gender roles are 6 percentage points less likely to get vaccinated, those who agree with a variety of conspiratorial statements are 43 percentage points less likely to vaccinate against COVID-19.
Introduction
As of January 2022, Europe finds itself well into the 4th wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, with some countries, including Poland, experiencing the highest rates of transmission since the virus was first detected. There are a few tools available to policymakers and healthcare professionals for combating the spread of the virus, ranging from preventative measures to strict social lockdowns aimed at reducing interpersonal interaction. A comprehensive literature review of 72 academic studies conducted by the BMJ found that the implementation of preventative measures such as hand washing, mask wearing, and social distancing decreased the risk of transmission by 53% (Talic et al., 2021). But even though such measures reduce transmission, the shortcomings in adherence and enforcement make high vaccination rates much more effective in diminishing the risk of hospitalization and death (Moline et al., 2021). With a consensus among experts reaffirming the effectiveness of vaccines in minimising the more severe cases of COVID-19 illness, the widespread availability of the vaccine has become the most effective and cost-efficient tool in limiting morbidity while avoiding future instances of economically unsustainable lockdowns. The drawbacks of the alternative scenario have already been made evident in 2020, before the development and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. Over the course of the year, hospital capacities were overwhelmed in many countries around the world, leading to significant spikes in excess deaths. Poland saw an increase of over 18% in all-cause mortality in 2020 (OECD, 2021), the fourth-highest in the OECD and second-highest in the European Union (Eurostat, 2021).
Considering the central role that prevalent vaccination plays in combating the impact of COVID-19, it is important to understand the underlying factors and demographic characteristics of individuals who are driving the low vaccination rates in countries such as Poland. With this in mind, we use an online survey: DIAGNOZA+ (DIAGNOZA Plus, 2020-2021), conducted on a representative sample of adults in Poland throughout the pandemic, allowing for the identification of characteristics that are most strongly correlated with vaccine scepticism. This kind of analysis can provide useful indicators for the targeting of certain policies and information campaigns that encourage vaccinations, and thereby suppress future outbreaks of SARS-CoV-2, as well as any other future pandemics. Below, we first outline the key features of the DIAGNOZA+ data, describe the methodology adopted in this study, and present results on the relationship between key demographic characteristics, social norms, views of respondents, and attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination. We show a strong correlation between traditional family values, conspiratorial views, and reservations relating to the vaccination programme. Having traditional family values (expressed by about 40% of the sample) is associated with an over 10 percentage point (p.p.) lower probability to declare a willingness to get vaccinated. This drops to about 6 p.p. when we extend the model to account for conspiratorial thinking, which strongly dominates the relationship. Individuals who express strong conspiratorial and anti-establishment views (about a quarter of the sample), conditional on other demographic characteristics, were more than 40 p.p. less likely to declare a willingness to get vaccinated.
Methodology
The following analysis is based on data from DIAGNOZA+, an online survey collected in seven waves over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic (DIAGNOZA Plus, 2020-2021). The panel survey was conducted with the purpose of assessing changes in the labour market situation of adults in Poland between April 2020 and July 2021. The survey consistently included standard questions on individual and household characteristics such as age, gender and education, as well as questions on as well as questions about the respondent’s labor market status, hours worked, and financial situation. Waves 3 and 4 included additional modules where respondents were asked to express their opinions on a variety of statements surrounding gender norms such as “In general, fathers are as well suited to look after their children as mothers”, “A pre-school child is likely to suffer if his or her mother works” and “When jobs are scarce, men should have more right to a job than women”. The questions were answered on a scale of 1 (strongly agree) to 4 (strongly disagree). For the analysis, these categorical variables are dichotomised, with a value of 1 assigned to responses 1 and 2 (strongly agree or agree) and a value of 0 assigned to responses 3 and 4 (disagree or strongly disagree). Thus, for each question, we develop a binary variable that categorises respondents as either having a progressive or traditional reaction to each particular gender norms statement.
In consecutive waves, the same respondents were asked questions surrounding their willingness to vaccinate against the virus (in wave 5) and their trust in experts and the government response to the COVID-19 pandemic (in wave 6). For this analysis, we select questions that may influence an individual’s likelihood to vaccinate, starting with their level of concern about the pandemic or their fear of the virus itself. Furthermore, we identify individuals with a high predisposition for conspiratorial beliefs based on information from wave 6. Each variable included in this module is converted into a binary measure of agreement or disagreement, as outlined above for the social norms questions. We consider seven statements from the survey related to conspiratorial views, including “Secret organisations influence political decisions” or “I trust my intuition more than the so-called experts” (see the full list of statements in Figure 2). For each of them, the variable is converted into a binary measure of agreement or disagreement, similarly to the social norms questions above. Those who agreed or strongly agreed with all seven statements are classified as having conspiratorial views.
Due to sample attrition and after dropping respondents who did not answer one (or more) of the questions needed for our analysis, the sample reduces to 726 individuals (see table A1 in the Annex). Although each wave of the DIAGNOZA+ survey is carefully weighted to ensure population representativeness of the survey, these cross-sectional weights are only relevant to each independent wave of the survey. Therefore, for our sample, we develop frequency weights by sex and age using population data from Statistics Poland (Statistics Poland, 2021), which are utilised throughout the analysis. Given the low number of participants in the oldest age groups (those above 60 years old), we limit the sample to individuals aged between 21 and 60. Unfortunately, calibrating the weights according to additional characteristics such as education and municipal population is not feasible with a sample of this size. Clearly, the requirement of consistent consecutive participation in at least three waves of the survey has implications for its representativeness. For example, after the sample of respondents that participated in wave 6 is cut to include only those who also participated in waves 3, 4 and 5, we observe a bias in favour of conspiratorial views among the remaining observations, indicating that individuals who hold these views were more likely to continue their participation in the survey. For example, while 18.1% of the total cross-sectional sample of individuals in wave 6 hold conspiratorial views, the proportion is 23.4% in the sample we analyse (falling slightly to 23.2% when weights are applied). From this perspective, while indicative of existing correlations, the results ought to be treated with some caution.
Limiting the sample to respondents who answered all sets of questions across several rounds of the survey allows us to study vaccine scepticism and respondents’ susceptibility to conspiracy theories in relation to a number of personal characteristics. Furthermore, we consider the relationship between a respondent’s attitudes towards certain social norms (asked in waves 3 and 4), their individual response to COVID-19 (asked in wave 5), and their trust in the government’s response to the pandemic (asked in wave 6). We begin the analysis by assessing the relationship between respondents’ demographic characteristics and their opinions on gender roles, their propensity to hold conspiratorial beliefs, and their concern about the pandemic. This is followed by two models measuring respondents’ willingness to vaccinate. In the first of these models, demographic characteristics and traditional family values are used as explanatory variables, while in the second model conspiratorial views are included as well. Finally, we conclude with a summary of results and policy considerations.
Survey Results
Traditional Family Values in Poland
The respondents of the DIAGNOZA+ survey vary, on average, in the ‘traditionality’ of their attitudes towards gender and family depending on the selected indicator. The shares of answers to the three questions about gender norms are presented in Figure 1. The results demonstrate that progressive views on gender norms in Poland were more common in relation to the workplace than the home and family. For example, the statement to which most respondents were opposed was “When jobs are scarce, men have more right to a job than women”, with 37.2% of respondents disagreeing and 50.3% of respondents strongly disagreeing. On the other hand, slightly fewer respondents disagreed (50.5%) or strongly disagreed (34.8%) with “In general, fathers are not as well suited to look after their children as mothers”. Finally, respondents were most ‘traditional’ in their views in reaction to the statement “A pre-school child is likely to suffer if his or her mother works”, with 28% agreeing and 10% strongly agreeing. There is a natural correlation between these different views, and in our analysis, we examine the significance of different combinations of the three indicators. Given the relatively small sample, only the last indicator proved to be significantly related to our main outcome of interest and we use this one to represent the view on the ‘progressive-traditional’ spectrum
Figure 1. Gender norms in the survey sample
Source: DIAGNOZA+ survey, waves 3 and 4. Note: Data weighted using weights generated from Statistics Poland’s data on population by sex and age. Sample limited to individuals aged 21-60. The statement “In general, fathers are as well suited to look after their children as mothers” from the questionnaire was adjusted in the graph for better readability.
Conspiratorial Views
In wave 6 of the DIAGNOZA+ survey respondents were asked seven different questions relating to trust in government, politicians, media, and the recommendations of experts. As shown in Figure 2, for five out of the seven statements, a majority of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the government or media are dishonest, intentionally share misinformation, or have ulterior motives. Nearly three quarters of respondents agreed that “politicians and the media deliberately hide certain information”. This result supports data published by the OECD in 2020 showing that, out of the 38 member countries, Poland had the second-lowest trust in government, with only 27.3% of the population expressing confidence (OECD, 2022). However, the DIAGNOZA+ survey goes further to find that nearly half of respondents in our sample reported that they trust their own intuitions more than the experts during the pandemic, while the least widespread belief out of the seven was that “secret organisations influence political decisions”. Still, even this statement, which suggests deep-seeded nefarious behaviour behind the scenes of government, found 39.8% of respondents to be in agreement. Note that we aim to identify individuals who have a general propensity for conspiratorial thinking, rather than those who simply find some of the statements particularly compelling. To this end, we only categorise those respondents who agreed with all seven statements as having a high propensity for conspiratorial thinking, which was the case for 23.2% of our sample after reweighting.
Figure 2. Conspiratorial beliefs and trust in authority
Source: DIAGNOZA+ survey, wave 6. Note: Data weighted using weights generated from Statistics Poland’s data on population by sex and age. Sample limited to individuals aged 21-60.
Analysis
Table 1 presents regression results on the relationship between specific beliefs reported in the different waves of the survey and a number of individual characteristics. We show these results for three dependent variables: traditional family values, as defined by the opinion that a pre-school child is likely to suffer if his or her mother works; propensity for conspiratorial views, which identifies the respondents that agreed with all seven statements presented in Figure 2; and concern about the pandemic, a binary variable that identifies individuals who expressed great worry or fear about the pandemic. The results indicate that parents who live with their children are 10.1 p.p. more likely to hold traditional family values. After controlling for age, gender and education, living in a small town or village is associated with a 10.9 p.p higher probability of ascribing to more traditional gender norms, while individuals holding a tertiary degree are 18 p.p. less likely to agree that “a pre-school child is likely to suffer if his or her mother works” compared to those with primary education. Interestingly, neither age nor gender significantly correlates with family values, suggesting that the DIAGNOZA+ survey did not capture an intergenerational or gender-driven divide on these issues. This might relate to the online nature of the survey and the implied sample selection, in particular among older individuals.
Table 1. Regression results on views and attitudes
Standard errors in parentheses. * p < 0.1, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01. Note: Data weighted using weights generated from Statistics Poland’s data on population by sex and age. Sample limited to individuals aged 21-60. Estimates using the linear probability model.
The results presented in Table 1 also demonstrate a relationship between some demographic characteristics and the likelihood to hold conspiratorial views (as defined by expressing agreement to the seven related statements in wave 6). A number of characteristics strongly correlate with conspiratorial thinking: being a parent living with their children aged 0-17, and living in small cities, towns and villages. Each of these characteristics is associated with a higher probability of believing in secret organisations and mistrusting experts. A number of characteristics strongly correlate with conspiratorial thinking: holding such views are 9.3 p.p. more likely among parents living with their underaged children and 10 p.p. more likely among individuals living in smaller towns or villages compared to those living in cities of over 500 thousand inhabitants. Higher education is strongly negatively correlated with the likelihood of holding conspiratorial views – those with tertiary education are 14.5 p.p. less likely to have these views compared to individuals with primary education.
One simple explanation for the increased vaccination rates among certain demographic groups in Poland could be that some segments of the population are more worried about the virus, and thus choose to take greater precautions. The analysis presented in Table 1 demonstrates that people were increasingly likely to be concerned about the pandemic in higher age groups. When asked “To what extent are you concerned about the COVID-19 pandemic?”, the probability of expressing serious concern increases progressively with age. This is an intuitive result considering the strong relationship between age and the severity of COVID-19 symptoms and the associated risk of mortality (CDC, 2021). Respondents aged between 31 and 40 were 10 p.p. more likely to report being very concerned or frightened than respondents between the age of 21 and 30, while in the age groups 41-50 (12.6 p.p.) and 51-60 (21.4 p.p.) the probability was even higher. There is also a weak but positive correlation (7.7 and 8.6 p.p.) between living in a city with a population of 10,000 to 500,000 inhabitants and expressing fear about the pandemic, as compared to respondents who lived in cities with a population of more than 500,000 people. The relationships between the remaining demographic characteristics and the probability of being seriously concerned about the pandemic are not statistically significant. Below, we use this data to examine the link between people’s beliefs and the likelihood of getting vaccinated.
Vaccine Scepticism, Demographic Characteristics and Conspiratorial Views
In light of the widespread scientific consensus on the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines, low vaccination rates in Poland are difficult to explain. In this section, we analyse to which extent they may be driven by the underlying beliefs, on top of the socio-demographic characteristics. Overall, 54% of respondents in the selected sample from the DIAGNOZA+ survey planned to be or had already been vaccinated. Thus, the survey sample closely reflects the actual proportion of the population that was fully vaccinated in Poland as of January 2022. (ECDC, 2022). In Model A of Table 2, we present the relationship between the response to the question “Do you plan to get vaccinated against COVID-19 or are you already vaccinated?” and traditional family values, alongside the usual demographic characteristics. We find that those in the 51-60 age group were 14.5 p.p. more likely to plan to vaccinate than those aged between 21 and 30. This also reflects the higher level of concern about the virus expressed by those over the age of 50, as presented in Table 1, and the risk of serious illness associated with increasing age. However, the relationship between age and the probability of vaccination was much weaker than the relationship between age and the probability of expressing general concern about the pandemic, implying that concern does not translate directly into a willingness to vaccinate. We also find that tertiary education has a particularly strong effect, and respondents who have a university degree were much more likely (17.7 p.p.) to get vaccinated than those with less than secondary education.
Through this analysis we also discover several less intuitive relationships between individual characteristics and the propensity to vaccinate. We find that women are 11.5 p.p. less likely to plan to vaccinate against COVID-19 than men. Moreover, individuals living in a city with less than 500,000 inhabitants were much less likely to vaccinate, with the strongest correlation (-23.5 p.p.) observed for respondents living in medium-sized cities of 100,000 to 500,000 people. However, a strong relationship can also be seen for smaller cities of 10,000 to 100,000 inhabitants (-19.3 p.p.) and small towns and villages (-17.2 p.p.). Respondents’ expressions of traditional family values are also a strong predictor of their propensity to vaccinate. After controlling for gender, age, education and municipality size, those categorised as holding traditional views are 10.6 p.p. less likely to plan to vaccinate against COVID-19. Our findings demonstrate that while population density, education, age and gender, are all strong indicators of vaccine scepticism in Poland, so is the degree of traditionalism in people’s beliefs.
Table 2. Regression results on vaccination: probability of being vaccinated or planning to get vaccinated
Standard errors in parentheses. * p < 0.1, ** p < 0.05, *** p < 0.01. Note: Data weighted using weights generated from Statistics Poland’s data on population by sex and age. Sample limited to individuals aged 21-60. Estimates using the linear probability model.
A commonly cited explanatory factor for vaccine scepticism is the susceptibility to conspiratorial beliefs, as well as scepticism towards information disseminated by figures of authority (Hornsey et al., 2018). Thus, in Model B, we seek to identify a relationship between conspiratorial beliefs and scepticism towards the COVID-19 vaccine in Poland. When adding to our model a binary indicator for agreement with all seven of the conspiratorial statements included in the survey, we find that those who agreed across the board were 43.3 p.p. less likely to get vaccinated. Therefore, it seems that the propensity for conspiratorial thinking is a very strong correlate of willingness to vaccinate, and the characteristic most strongly associated with vaccine scepticism. The impact of the demographic factors goes in the same direction for both models, although the scale diminishes in Model B after controlling for conspiratorial views, reflecting the higher propensity of older individuals to hold such views. Furthermore, the effect of traditional family values is much weaker in Model B, suggesting a positive correlation between traditional family values and conspiratorial beliefs (Figure A1 in the Annex shows how values and views in the analysis views overlap with each other). This is in line with past research that ties traditional moral values and conservatism with conspiratorial beliefs, both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic (Pennycook et al., 2020; Romer and Jamieson, 2021).
One explanation for the strong relationship between conspiratorial beliefs and vaccine scepticism could be that respondents who do not trust the media and figures of authority believe that the dangers of the pandemic have been exaggerated and would thus not be concerned about its consequences. We account for this possibility in Model C by including the indicator for fear of the pandemic. We find that those who are very concerned or frightened are 21.1 p.p. more likely to vaccinate than those who are not. However, including this variable in the model has little effect on the estimates of the relationship between traditional gender views or conspiratorial thinking and the likelihood to vaccinate. Further research is needed to understand what is driving these relationships in this particular context. These findings demonstrate that while individuals that believe in conspiracies are the most susceptible to vaccine scepticism, other elements such as fear of the pandemic, education attainment, and where people live play an important role as well.
Conclusion
By January 2022 most European countries have reached a plateau in their vaccination rates, with free vaccines readily available since the summer months of 2021 to all those who are willing to take them. Not only have the high rates of hospital admissions among the non-vaccinated population proven the epidemiological models about the efficacy of vaccines in reducing hospitalisation and death to be true (a study in the United States showed a more than tenfold reduction in the risk of each measure; Scobie et al., 2021), but disparities between countries in the proportion of the population that is vaccinated have created a natural experiment that further substantiates this hypothesis. Poland, a country with a vaccination rate that is 15 p.p. lower than neighbouring Germany, had virtually the same number of cases per 100,000 people in the first two weeks of December, but almost threefold the number of deaths from COVID-19 (ECDC, 2021). Due to the burden COVID-19 related hospitalisations place on healthcare systems, the issues arising from the significant scale of vaccine scepticism are not only related to physical well-being, but also directly impact economic and fiscal stability.
Despite a fairly small sample size available for our analysis from the DIAGNOZA+ survey, a number of important correlations are identified in this study. We find that people living in cities and towns smaller than 500,000 people are less likely to vaccinate than those living in big cities. We show that women, those with less than secondary education, and young people are less likely to be vaccinated. Moreover, those believing that pre-school-aged children suffer when their mothers work are less likely to vaccinate compared to those with more progressive gender views. The most significant predictor of vaccine scepticism, however, is whether a respondent expressed low trust in authority and belief in the conspiracy theories presented in the survey, which was the case for 23.2% of the sample. These individuals are more than 40 p.p. less likely to express willingness to get vaccinated than the rest of the population. This suggests that the low rate of vaccination in Poland can, in part, be attributed to widespread distrust of government, the media, and scientific experts. Poland has already suffered the consequences of the high magnitude of anti-vaccine sentiments in the population, with the severity of the fourth wave of COVID-19 being one of the harshest in Europe (ECDC, 2021). If the government intends to prevent future outbreaks and protect the healthcare system and the economy, it must present a consistent, clear, and transparent message about the safety and efficiency of vaccines to minimise the misinformation that is driving vaccine scepticism among certain demographic groups.
References
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- DIAGNOZA Plus, (2021). https://diagnoza.plus/
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- Pennycook, G., Cheyne J.A., Koehler, D., & Fugelsang, J.(2020). “On the belief that beliefs should change according to evidence: Implications for conspiratorial, moral, paranormal, political, religious, and science beliefs”, Judgement and Decision Making
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- Scobie H. et al., (2021). “Monitoring Incidence of COVID-19 Cases, Hospitalizations, and Deaths, by Vaccination Status — 13 U.S. Jurisdictions, April 4–July 17, 2021”, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
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Annex is available in the PDF version.
Disclaimer
This Policy Paper was prepared under the FROGEE project, with financial support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). FROGEE papers contribute to the discussion of inequalities in Central and Eastern Europe. For more information, please visit www.freepolicybriefs.com. The views presented in the Policy Paper reflect the opinions of the authors and do not necessarily overlap with the position of the FREE Network or Sida.