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.
- Speaker
- Date
- Friday 21 Mar 2025, 12:00 - 13:15
- Type
- Seminar
- Room
- T3-32
- Building
- Polak Building
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.
About the Speaker
Henning is a behavioral and experimental economist focusing on topics in labor, education, and the formation of (noncognitive) skills. He has worked on the importance of early child care for life outcomes and inequality. In addition, he has projects in the areas of digital learning as well as paternalistic decision making. He uses field experiments as well as lab, lab-in-the-field, and survey experiments. He has recent publications in the Journal of Political Economy, the Journal of the European Economic Association, Nature Human Behavior, and Experimental Economics.
Registration
If you are interested in booking a bilateral on Thursday afternoon (after 15:00) or Friday morning or joining for diner on Thursday evening, please send an email to dur@ese.eur.nl.
