7. Religious and Cultural Leaders

For more details on how foreign language media influence norms and value, see Subervi-Velez (1986), Zhou and Cai (2002).

The payoff provided here departs slightly from all the payoffs specified in Hauk and Mueller (2015) and Verdier and Zenou (2015, 2018). Hauk and Mueller (2015) suggest a payoff function that maximizes the share of individuals with the same trait and an alternative which aims for a maximization of conversions the leader is part of. Verdier and Zenou (2015) consider a time-dependent version, whereas Verdier and Zenou (2018) develop a continuous-time model. For simplicity, we consider here the simplest, most general specification.

To be more precise, consider the impact of being part of a religious community on the attitude toward as well as actual female labor force participation. Generally, views that see men as the main breadwinners and women as homemakers are strongly influenced by religious ideology (Algan and Cahuc 2006; Guiso et al. 2003). This is also evidenced by a case study on Imams in Oslo (Predelli 2004), which documents that these Imams do not forbid women to work in the public sphere, but that if women were to take outside jobs they are encouraged to work in education or medical care. This seems to indicate that religious leaders have indeed an impact on attitudes that are relevant for labor market outcomes. These attitudes also have an impact on actual labor market outcomes, as perceptions of women as homemakers are closely associated with women’s labor market outcomes (Fortin 2005).

For an explicit discussion of the role of religious organizations in discouraging education, see Carvalho et al. (2017).

The cost can be either paid by an external power or by the community itself through donations.

A model that incorporates many of these features, without addressing the role of the leader specifically, has been made by Carvalho (2016).