Mating Market Competition and Gender Norms
We study norms regulating socially acceptable female behavior and the effects of between-group competition in the mating market on their development. We focus on a case study featuring an inflow of ethnic Greek refugees arriving from Turkey following the Greco-Turkish conflict in the early 20th century and examine how the composition of the incoming refugee population influenced the gender norms in the affected localities. We leverage the fact that the conflict in Turkey resulted in a large number of men being captured or executed before they could emigrate. Consequently, women were over represented in the refugee population, triggering a competition shock in the mating market. At the time, prevailing norms stigmatized women living outside male-headed households, making female refugees particularly vulnerable to stereotypes of low moral standards.
We conjecture that for a sufficient level of competition, an individual from the local population has an incentive to double down on conservative gender norms as a means of undermining the reputation of the newcomer competitors, even if this does not align with their true preferences. Specifically, individuals invested in the mating prospects of local women---whether for themselves or their families---may benefit from emphasizing female `purity' as a valued trait, thereby amplifying the locals' comparative advantage over the morally stigmatized competition. We hypothesize that this, in turn, led to an increased value placed on conservative norms signaled by female behavior. To study this idea, we exploit the variation in the gender composition of refugees in a given locality as a proxy for the intensity of competition relying on the as-good-as-random allocation of refugees determined by decisions of Greek authorities. We combine analyses from census data; multiple marriage registries; and a fine-tailored survey to examine our mating competition mechanism against other competing explanations for the observed patterns.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Elias Dinas is Professor of Political Science at the European University Institute (EUI), where he holds the Swiss Chair of Democracy, Federalism and International Governance. He received his PhD from the European University Institute and has previously taught at the Universities of Oxford and Nottingham. His research focuses on political socialization, the formation of political identities, and the long-term legacies of authoritarian rule. He is the Principal Investigator of the ERC-funded project POSTNORM, which explores how ideological legacies of past authoritarian regimes shape contemporary party systems and public opinion. He has also published extensively on issues of political behavior. His work has appeared in leading journals in the field, has received several awards and has been commented in the media.
Discussant
Anita Budziszewska, Phd, - the University of Warsaw, Faculty of Political Science and International Studies and is a member of the Department of Diplomacy and International Institutions. She is a junior postdoctoral visiting fellow at IHEID. Before joining IHEID, she conducted her research project on “Philanthropy and International Relations" at the Geneva Center for Philanthropy at the University of Geneva funded within the Swiss Government Excellence Programme. She was also a stipendist of Swiss based Anneliese und Mieczyslaw Kocwin Stiftung. She is also a research fellow at the Centre for Philanthropic Studies, the University of Basel.