Gender Norms and Labor-Supply Expectations: Experimental Evidence from Adolescents

Abstract

Gender gaps in labor-market outcomes often exacerbate with the arrival of the first child. We investigate how highlighting existing gender norms affects labor-supply expectations in a sample of 2,000 German adolescents. At baseline, the majority of girls expects to work 20 hours or less per week when having a young child, and expects their partners to work 30 hours or more. We implement randomized treatments that (i) increase the salience of the existing traditional norm prescribing labor supply of mothers and fathers of young children, and (ii) correct misperceptions about the norm’s content. The treatments significantly reduce girls’ self-expected labor supply and increase the expected within-family gender gap. In a second experiment, we show that a more gender-egalitarian norm towards sharing household responsibilities does not affect labor-supply expectations.

Keywords: gender norms, female labor supply, survey experiment

JEL Classification: J160, J220, C930, D830