Gender Norms and Women's Decision to Work: Evidence from Japan

Núria Rodriguez-Planas and Ryuichi Tanaka

No 14549, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Using individual-level data from the National Family Research of Japan Survey (1999, 2004 and 2009) and exploiting variation in the share of individuals with non-traditional gender norms across birth-cohorts, survey year, education, and prefecture, we find that an increase in the share of individuals with non-traditional beliefs by one standard deviation is associated with an increase in Japanese women's decision to work by 0.016 percentage points, the equivalent of an increase of 3.4% standard deviation. Our measure of non-traditional gender norms is the share of women who disagree with the statement "men should work outside and women should look after the family". As we conduct a battery of sensitivity analyses and placebo tests, our findings suggest an impact of non- traditional norms on Japanese women's decision to work full-time.

Keywords: culture; women's decision to work; gender norms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J22 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2021-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen, nep-lab and nep-soc
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Published - published in: Review of Economics of the Household , 2022, 20, 15 - 36

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Journal Article: Gender norms and women’s decision to work: evidence from Japan (2022)
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