Name: <\/strong>Nivedhitha Subramanian<\/p>\n\n\n\n Title: <\/strong>Assistant Professor of Economics <\/p>\n\n\n\n Degrees from: <\/strong>Duke University, Ph.D. in public policy studies; Northwestern University, M.A. in economics; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, S.B. in economics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Economics because<\/strong>: Like many U.S. high schools, Subramanian\u2019s did not offer economics. \u201cBut I really liked math and I really liked social studies,\u201d she recalls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOne of my favorite teachers \u2014 with whom I’m still in touch \u2014 suggested that I would really like economics because it combines the two. And she was right.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her work: <\/strong>As a development and labor economist with a focus on gender, Subramanian looks at the economic challenges facing less-developed countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Specifically, she uses data to explore how gender, social expectations, and even reputation affect workers\u2019 choices in developing countries, particularly Pakistan \u2014 questions like, \u201cHow do we hire people? What are the constraints that people, particularly women, might face in the labor market?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example: <\/strong>For her dissertation, Subramanian conducted experiments on how gender norms affect women job seekers in Pakistan. To gather data, she used Job Asaan, a Lahore-based platform for female job seekers created by a team of development economists at Duke, including Subramanian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the first experiment, some job seekers were given extra, gender-specific information about job postings, such as the gender of the job\u2019s supervisor. Boom: Application rates doubled among job seekers armed with that information; in addition, job seekers with that information were more likely to apply to a job with a female supervisor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere’s this discrepancy between what women want for themselves and what they think that their parents or their families want for them.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n In the second experiment, some job seekers were reminded, or \u201cprimed,\u201d about family expectations, being asked if they had discussed their job search with their family. (The answer was not surprising: \u201can overwhelming \u2018yes,\u2019 because in a South Asian context, especially for young people, it\u2019s something you discuss with your parents,\u201d says Subramanian.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, being reminded of family affected job seekers\u2019 behavior, lowering their applications by 30 percent. \u201cThis is consistent with women knowing that their families might not be supportive of their job search,\u201d Subramanian says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time, women who got the family reminder were more likely to apply to jobs when also given information about the gender of coworkers, which suggests that \u201cthey believe their families care whether they will be working with men or women,\u201d explains Subramanian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere’s this discrepancy between what women want for themselves and what they think that their parents or their families want for them. And that was really impacting which jobs they apply to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In terms of policy, Subramanian has suggested some easy-to-implement strategies to increase job application rates, like providing accurate information in a job posting about the gender of a job\u2019s supervisor, or, for businesses seeking workers particularly, \u201csimply publicizing the fact that they have female supervisors and\/or that they have mostly or all female employees.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why development economics? <\/strong>Subramanian, who is Indian-American, grew up in the U.S. but traveled to India frequently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cJust seeing the differences in day-to-day life and the two different contexts sparked a lot of questions for me,\u201d she explains. \u201cIn college, I took a class on development economics, and I realized that those were exactly the questions that I wanted to answer, using really interesting methods.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Context matters<\/strong>: \u201cPart of the joy of this kind of research is learning about other contexts \u2014 about what other communities and societies look like \u2014 and then understanding sort of the bigger picture of your work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere seems to be a lot of interaction across departments, and I thought that was really exciting.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n To that end, \u201cbeing able to work in a country, living there for longer periods of time, is just incredibly valuable to understanding the context and doing high-quality social science research,\u201d Subramanian says. \u201cGranted, in the current state of the world, that’s not always possible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why Bates? <\/strong>\u201cI am an economist, but I really like talking to other social scientists and learning from broader communities,\u201d she says. At Bates, “economics and sociology are literally on the same hallway,\u201d sharing a floor in Pettengill Hall with several other academic programs, including Africana and classical and medieval studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere seems to be a lot of interaction across departments, and I thought that was really exciting,” she says. During her visits, \u201cI really liked talking to everyone I met, including all the students. They were fantastic, and so I was really excited about getting to interact with these faculty and students going forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why teach? <\/strong>\u201cTeaching is exciting,\u201d she says. \u201cThere’s almost no parallel feeling to seeing something click for a student.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This semester, she\u2019s teaching statistics, a rite of passage for econ majors. \u201cStudents come in with mixed feelings about how excited they are. Even if they are initially less excited, you can help them see why knowing statistics is useful for interpreting the world around us. That’s just really rewarding.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A development and labor economist, Subramanian studies economic challenges in less-developed countries, especially for women\/ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1005,"featured_media":135726,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,14,224],"tags":[12201,12207],"class_list":["post-135716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-faculty-staff","category-society-culture","tag-2020-tenure-track-2","tag-nivedhitha-subramanian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1005"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135716"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135964,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135716\/revisions\/135964"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Assistant](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2020\/09\/200814_Nivedhitha_Subramanian_0163.jpg\")