Women's Work, Social Norms and the Marriage Market

Arbeitspapier

While it is well-acknowledged that the gendered division of labor within marriage adversely affects women's allocation of time to market work, there is less evidence on how extant social norms can influence women's work choices pre-marriage. We conduct an experiment on an online marriage market platform that allows us to measure preferences of individuals in partner selection in India. We find that employed women are 14.5% less likely to receive interest from male suitors relative to women who are not working. In addition, women employed in 'masculine' occupations are 3.2% less likely to elicit interest from suitors relative to those in 'feminine' occupations. Our results highlight the strong effect of gender norms and patriarchy on marital preferences, especially for men hailing from higher castes and northern India, where communities have more traditional gender norms. These findings suggest that expectations regarding returns in the marriage market may influence women's labor market participation and the nature of market work.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 15948

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure; Domestic Abuse ; Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination ; Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
• Subject: social norms ; work choices ; marriage market ; gender ; India

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Afridi, Farzana ; Arora, Abhishek ; Dhar, Diva ; Mahajan, Kanika
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2023

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/272575
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET