This paper reviews the literature on gender and culture. Gender gaps in various outcomes (competitiveness, labor force participation, and performance in mathematics, amongst many others) show remarkable differences across countries and tend to persist over time. The economics literature...

We study the roots of violence against women, and propose that it partly originates in cultural norms that derive from (a) characteristics of the traditional subsistence problem in different societies, and (b) differences in the sexual division of labor for solving that problem in each society....

Using a new dataset, we investigate the determinants of violence against women in Africa. We focus on cultural factors arising from pre-colonial customs and find evidence consistent with two hypotheses. First, ancient socioeconomic conditions determine social norms about gender roles, family...