Of housewives and feminists: Gender norms and intra-household division of labour

Luise Görges

doi:10.1016/j.labeco.2021.102044

Of housewives and feminists: Gender norms and intra-household division of labour

Luise Görges^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review

9 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

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.

Original language	English
Article number	102044
Journal	Labour Economics
Volume	72
Number of pages	17
ISSN	0927-5371
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2021.102044
Publication status	Published - 10.2021

Bibliographical note

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.

Research areas and keywords

Battle of the sexes
Experiment
Gender
Labour division
Norms
Gender and Diversity
Economics

ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

Economics and Econometrics
Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

Access to Document

10.1016/j.labeco.2021.102044

9 Citations
1 Working papers

Of housewives and feminists: Gender norms and intra-household division of labour
Görges, L., 04.2021, Lüneburg: Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre - Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, 51 p. (Working Paper Series in Economics; vol. 400).
Research output: Working paper › Working papers

Open Access
File

Cite this

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title = "Of housewives and feminists: Gender norms and intra-household division of labour",

abstract = "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.",

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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.

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Of housewives and feminists: Gender norms and intra-household division of labour

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Research areas and keywords

ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

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Research output

Of housewives and feminists: Gender norms and intra-household division of labour

Cite this