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GENDERSCAPES Fall 2015
P RICES AN D PE R S O NH O O D : G E N D E R , RAC E , AN D T H E S O CIAL H I STO R Y O F R I S K - B AS E D P RICI N G
Krippner
Greta R. Krippner (Sociology) In exploring the surprising persistence of gender-based pricing in insurance markets, Greta R. Krippner (Associate Professor of Sociology) and Daniel Hirschman (Ph.D. candidate Sociology) relied on support of a Seed Grant from IRWG to conduct extensive archival work at the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University. Insurance is one of the few domains in American life where, as Mary Heen, a long-time observer of the industry, noted in the New York Times, “discrimination on the basis of sex is not only permitted but virtually required.” Across most lines of insurance, similarly situated men and women can expect to pay different prices for access to coverage – a practice that insurers see as integral to requiring each individual to pay for her “unique” risk. Insurance, it appears, has been left behind by the civil rights revolution that has transformed how Americans exchange goods and services in the marketplace over the last half century. The notion that each individual should “bear the cost” of the risk she represents is so pervasive in ways of thinking about how we manage misfortune that it forms a kind of common sense in
modern market societies. If you are a smoker, you can expect your health and life insurance premiums to reflect your greater likelihood of disease and early mortality. If you have defaulted on a loan, you can expect a higher mortgage payment. These examples are relatively uncontroversial as they describe situations where the risk that an individual will incur some misfortune is shaped by behaviors perceived to be directly controlled or chosen by that individual. But the principle of bearing one’s own risk also extends – at least potentially – to situations where the risk in question is not “chosen” but shaped by an individual’s gender, race, class, and
2014-15 IRWG Faculty Seed Grant Recipients Sue Anne Bell (School of Nursing) Gender Mainstreaming in U.S. Disaster Preparedness and Response: A Policy Monitoring Analysis
Aileen Huang-Saad (Biomedical Engineering) Examining the Effect of Entrepreneurial Education Pedagogy on the Development of Women in STEM
Amy Chavasse (School of Music Theatre & Dance) Sola, Dances by and for Women
Holly Hughes (Art & Design, Women’s Studies, Theatre & Drama) Preaching to the Perverted: A Hybrid Memoir
Clare Croft (Dance) Emerging Voices in Queer Dance Vanessa K. Dalton (Obstetrics and Gynecology) The Impact of Method Choice on Contraception Continuation in Ghana
Aliyah Khan (Afroamerican and African Studies, English Language & Literature) and Sherie Randolph (Afroamerican and African Studies, History)
Black Feminist Think Tank: A Symposium of the DAAS African American Studies Workshop Julie R. Posselt (School of Education) Competitiveness & Support in STEM Graduate Education: Examining Consequences of Organizational Culture for Mental Health by Gender, Race, & Sexuality Gayle Rubin (Anthropology, Women’s Studies) Valley of the Kings: Leathermen in San Francisco, 1960 – 1990
Robert Wyrod (Women’s Studies) The Gender Question on China’s Second Continent: African Women in the New Era of Chinese Development Damon R. Young (Screen Arts & Cultures) Making Sex Public: Cinema, Sex and the Social Ruth Zielinski (School of Nursing) Implementation and Evaluation of Home Based Life Saving Skills