BU Economics Professor Claudia Olivetti on “Why Some Women Try to Have It All”
BU Economics Professor Claudia Olivetti recently weighed in “Why Some Women Try to Have It All”:
Consider two women. Eleonora Patacchini is an economics professor at Syracuse University. Back in Italy, where she grew up, her mother was a professor. Claudia Olivetti, an economics professor at Boston University, also grew up in Italy; her mother was a housewife.
Both women clearly remember their friends’ mothers. Seeing the range of lifestyles of her friends’ moms — some were home cooking, some were out working — reinforced Patacchini’s identification with her mother, the professor. But Olivetti was fascinated by the working moms of her friends and knew she wanted to be like them instead of a housewife like her mom.
In a recent working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, Olivetti and Patacchini examine how early gender identity formation influences work decisions in adulthood. They assess “work decisions” by looking at the number of hours worked (controlled for education, family wealth and location).
See http://www.pbs.org/newshour/businessdesk/2013/11/why-some-women-try-to-have-it.html for the complete article.
Why Some Women Try to Have It All: New Research on ‘Like Mother, Like Daughter’, Simone Pathe
Published by PBS.org in “The Business Desk”, 11/20/13