Dr. Allegra Midgette, research fellow, Assistant Professor (Texas A&M University, the U.S.):
When Does Care Matter? Thinking about How Family Care is Valued & Understood
Thursday 9 th April 2026, 10.15-11.45
Venue: Linna, ground floor, K104 Väinö Linna -Sali auditorio and online
Introduction to the lecture: It is estimated that it will take 92 years before gender equality is reached in the division of care labor, which includes doing childcare, eldercare, and housework. Inequality in who does care is associated with various detrimental outcomes, such as decreasing women’s career involvement and men’s involvement within the family. However, despite the importance of care, we know little about how individuals come to value and understand care labor.
In this talk, I present our recent systematic program of research using qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate US and Chinese individuals’ expectations for who will do care labor, their assumptions about who should care, and their attitudes towards whether care is valuable. Together, this lecture will include the presentation of newly developed empirical measures, empirical findings, as well as a theoretical discussion on what contributes to the devaluation of care for deepening our understanding about how we come to value the role that care can play in society.
Bio: Dr. Allegra Midgette is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Texas A&M University. Dr. Midgette’s research is on moral development and education across cultures. She is currently conducting her Fulbright research fellowship at Tampere University. Dr. Midgette’s research investigates the origins and social processes that support individuals in developing an understanding of justice and learning how to care for others. Her work addresses two key questions: How do we come to care about each other? How do we become just in the face of inequality?
More information on the event, please contact; Mia Tammelin (mia.tammelin@tuni.fi)
