Alexandra Roulet

Alexandra Roulet
Assistant Professor of Economics, INSEAD
The Mathieu Guillemin MBA’97J Fellowship in Business and Society

Alexandra graduated from the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, and earned her PhD in Economics at Harvard University. She is the current recipient of the Mathieu Guillemin MBA'97J Fellowship in Business and Society. She is a member of the French Council of Economic Analysis.

Her research focuses on labour economics and has been published in leading academic journals such as the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics or the Journal of Public Economics. She is the co-winner of the 2017 Upjohn Institute Dissertation Award.

Can you share an example of research or teaching that has helped challenge traditional gender norms?

I think the work of 2023 Nobel Prize Winner Claudia Goldin is foundational. She showed how there cannot be gender equity at work without gender equity at home. She also showed how "greedy jobs", i.e. high paying jobs that reward long hours and heavy professional investment in the typical child-bearing ages, are a big driver of the remaining gender pay gap.

What impact do you believe business education can have on moving the needle toward gender equity?​

In the classroom we are having discussions about power dynamics within couples and how household decision making is often detrimental to women's careers. Before having these discussions, we look at facts, that we can agree on. We make sure everyone feels safe, and can express their opinion, whatever they are. Over the years, we moved from a world where females felt unsafe to express themselves to a world where men felt unsafe to express themselves! We have now reached a period where I feel everyone is able to safely express themselves in the classroom. 

I think these discussions continue outside the classroom and are very powerful. They can shape future decisions of participants and in that sense move the needle toward gender equity.

What message do you hope to convey to students about the importance of gender equity in leadership?  

Gender diversity, and diversity more generally, brings about better decision making. Judgment is shaped by one's personal experience.  

That's why diversity is valuable, because of the different viewpoints it allows to foster. Bringing women to leadership positions is not about lowering quality. There are largely enough high-quality women! It's about bringing other viewpoints, other experiences. It's about adding, not lowering. This holds true for all other dimensions of diversity. 

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