The Causal Impact of Gender Norms on Mothers’ Employment Attitudes and Expectations

Henning Hermes, Marina Krauß, Philipp Lergetporer, Frauke Peter and Simon Wiederhold ()
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Marina Krauß: University of Augsburg
Philipp Lergetporer: Technical University of Munich
Frauke Peter: German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies

No 2024-024, Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group

Abstract: This field experiment investigates the causal impact of mothers’ perceptions of gender norms on their employment attitudes and labor-supply expectations. We provide mothers of young children in Germany with information about the prevailing gender norm regarding maternal employment in their city. At baseline, over 70% of mothers incorrectly perceive this gender norm as too conservative. Our randomized treatment improves the accuracy of these perceptions, significantly reducing the share of mothers who misperceive gender norms as overly conservative. The treatment also shifts mothers’ own labor-market attitudes towards being more liberal—and we show that specifically the shifted attitude is a strong predictor of mothers’ future labor-market participation. Consistently, treated mothers are significantly more likely to plan an increase in their working hours one year ahead.

Keywords: maternal employment; gender equality; randomized controlled trial (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 J16 J18 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-lab
Note: ECI
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http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Hermes ... orms-mothers-emp.pdf First version, December, 2024 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hka:wpaper:2024-024

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