TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Hermes, Henning
AU  - Krauß, Marina
AU  - Lergetporer, Philipp
AU  - Peter, Frauke
AU  - Wiederhold, Simon
        TI  - The Causal Impact of Gender Norms on Mothers' Employment Attitudes and Expectations
        PY  - 2024/Dec/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 17543
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp17543
        AB  - 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.
        KW  - gender norms
KW  - maternal employment
KW  - gender equality
KW  - randomized controlled trial
        ER  -