Gender norms and labor-supply expectations: Experimental evidence from adolescents

Arbeitspapier

Gender gaps in labor-market outcomes often emerge with the arrival of the first child. We investigate a causal link between gender norms and labor-supply expectations within a survey experiment among 2,000 German adolescents. Using a hypothetical scenario, we document that the majority of girls expects to work 20 hours or less per week when having a young child, and expects from their partner to work 30 hours or more. Randomized treatments that highlight the existing traditional norm towards mothers significantly reduce girls' self-expected labor supply and thereby increase the expected gender difference in labor supply between their partners and themselves (the expected within-family gender gap). Treatment effects persist in a follow-up survey two weeks later, and extend to incentivized outcomes. In a second experiment, we highlight another, more gender-egalitarian, norm towards shared household responsibilities and show that this attenuates the expected within-family gender gap. Our results suggest that social norms play an important role in shaping gender gaps in labor-market outcomes around child birth.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Discussion Paper ; No. 259

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination ; Time Allocation and Labor Supply ; Field Experiments ; Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
• Subject: gender norms ; female labor supply ; survey experiment

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Grewenig, Elisabeth ; Lergetporer, Philipp ; Werner, Katharina
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München und Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Collaborative Research Center Transregio 190 - Rationality and Competition
• (where): München und Berlin
• (when): 2020

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/233483
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:46 AM CET