Of housewives and feminists: Gender norms and intra-household division of labour
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Lüneburg: Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre - Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, 2021. (Working Paper Series in Economics; Vol. 400).
Research output: Working paper › Working papers
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TY - UNPB
T1 - Of housewives and feminists
T2 - Gender norms and intra-household division of labour
AU - Görges, Luise
PY - 2021/4
Y1 - 2021/4
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://hdl.handle.net/10419/234589
M3 - Working papers
T3 - Working Paper Series in Economics
BT - Of housewives and feminists
PB - Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre - Leuphana Universität Lüneburg
CY - Lüneburg
ER -