Professor of Economics, University of Turin & Collegio Carlo Alberto
I am a behavioural, experimental and labour economist. My research investigates why gender norms and stereotypes persist, how they are passed on within families and communities, and how they shape choices in education, paid work and care.
I combine tools from economics, psychology, applied linguistics and data science. With colleagues I have developed ways to measure stereotypes in language, images and surveys, alongside theory on identity, conformity and the intergenerational transmission of values.
My current work studies how communication technology changed the way gender norms are transmitted in twentieth-century Italy, from the spread of the telephone network to the women who ran it as some of the country’s first technical workers.
The short story is I became an economist because I hate injustice (the long story is here). After 25 years in the UK I returned to Italy, which turned into a natural experiment of its own: I wrote about it in Repatriarched.
What I work on
- Gender norms and their transmission. How norms are sustained by identity, conformity and expectations, and passed between generations and peers.
- Measuring stereotypes. Detecting gender stereotypes in text and images, and testing how people recognise them.
- Work, care and the family. Unpaid work, return to work after childbirth, pensions and the division of labour at home.
- Bias, discrimination and competition. Experimental evidence on gender gaps in competition, risk and help-seeking.
- Sexual exchanges. The economics of sex markets and sex work: stigma, demand, regulation and criminalisation.
Visiting Professor, University of Reading · Senior Visiting Fellow, LSE WISPPRH · IZA Fellow
CV · Bio in English and Italian · Google Scholar · RePEc · ORCID · marina.dellagiusta@carloalberto.org