Of housewives and feminists: Gender norms and intra-household division of labour
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In: Labour Economics, Vol. 72, 102044, 10.2021.
Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Of housewives and feminists
T2 - Gender norms and intra-household division of labour
AU - Görges, Luise
N1 - Valuable comments by the editor, Manuela Angelucci, and two anonymous referees, as well as Ralph Bayer, Miriam Beblo, Elisabeth Bublitz, Francesco Fallucchi, Evelyn Korn, Eva Markowsky, Gerd Mühlheußer, Daniele Nosenzo, Kristin Paetz, Grischa Perino, Elizabeth Peters, Arne Pieters, Ernesto Reuben, Patrick Schneider, Melanie Schröder, Joël van der Weele, David Wozniak, as well as participants of the 2018 Leuphana Workshop on Microeconomics and meetings of ASSA, MBEES and WEAI are gratefully acknowledged. I thank the WiSo Graduate School of Universitaet Hamburg and Miriam Beblo for providing funds in support of this project.
PY - 2021/10
Y1 - 2021/10
N2 - To investigate the role of gender norms in household specialisation choices, I conduct a lab experiment with real hetero-sexual couples playing a battle of the sexes game. The salience of gender norms varies across treatments: the Norm group chooses between strategies labelled as a family specialisation game (Career vs. Family), the Neutral group chooses A vs. B. Women respond strongly to the salience of Norms; they opt for Career at a significantly lower rate compared to Neutral, regardless of familiarity with their partner. By contrast, men's response is weak and heterogeneous across partner and stranger pairings. Additional analyses suggest that the pattern is not explained by differential beliefs, but is consistent with marriage market motives of some men who may want to signal progressive gender attitudes to their partner.
AB - To investigate the role of gender norms in household specialisation choices, I conduct a lab experiment with real hetero-sexual couples playing a battle of the sexes game. The salience of gender norms varies across treatments: the Norm group chooses between strategies labelled as a family specialisation game (Career vs. Family), the Neutral group chooses A vs. B. Women respond strongly to the salience of Norms; they opt for Career at a significantly lower rate compared to Neutral, regardless of familiarity with their partner. By contrast, men's response is weak and heterogeneous across partner and stranger pairings. Additional analyses suggest that the pattern is not explained by differential beliefs, but is consistent with marriage market motives of some men who may want to signal progressive gender attitudes to their partner.
KW - Battle of the sexes
KW - Experiment
KW - Gender
KW - Labour division
KW - Norms
KW - Gender and Diversity
KW - Economics
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85114032463&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.labeco.2021.102044
DO - 10.1016/j.labeco.2021.102044
M3 - Journal articles
AN - SCOPUS:85114032463
VL - 72
JO - Labour Economics
JF - Labour Economics
SN - 0927-5371
M1 - 102044
ER -