Interactions amongst gender norms: Evidence from US couples

Galván, Estefanía - García-Peñalosa, Cecilia

Resumen:

Gendered norms have major implications for women’s labor market outcomes. Notably, a recent literature finds that child-rearing norms and the prescription that the husband should be the main breadwinner lead to behavioral changes affecting women's labor supply. Motherhood reduces participation and hours of market work, while women who earn more than their husbands have been shown to react in ways that reverse that gap. In this paper we use panel data for the US to examine to what extent these two different norms interact. We start by asking whether child-rearing norms affect women who are the main breadwinner and those who are not in the same way, and then turn to how mothers and childless women react when breaking the male-as-the-breadwinner norm. Our results show that the breadwinner norm has an effect only on mothers, suggesting that the salience of gender norms may depend on the household's context. Concerning child-rearing, we find that although the labor supply of women who earn more than their husbands initially responds to motherhood less than that of secondary earners, the two groups converge after 10 years. Moreover, women in the former category exhibit a disproportionately large increases in the share of housework they perform after becoming mothers. These results indicate that norms still prevail over considerations of comparative advantage, and that the presence of children pushes women to seek to compensate breaking a norm by adhering to another one.


Las normas de género tienen consecuencias relevantes para los resultados del mercado laboral de las mujeres. En particular, una literatura reciente encuentra que las normas de crianza de los hijos y la prescripción de que el varón debe ser el principal sostén de la familia conducen a cambios de comportamiento que afectan la oferta laboral de las mujeres. La maternidad reduce la participación y las horas de trabajo en el mercado, mientras que se ha demostrado que las mujeres que ganan más que sus maridos reaccionan de manera de revertir dicha brecha. En este documento utilizamos datos de panel de Estados Unidos para examinar en qué medida estas dos normas interactúan entre sí. Comenzamos por preguntarnos si las normas de crianza de los hijos afectan a las mujeres que son el principal sostén de la familia y a las que no lo son de la misma manera, y luego pasamos a ver cómo reaccionan las madres y las mujeres sin hijos cuando rompen la norma del hombre proveedor. Nuestros resultados muestran que la norma de varón proveedor tiene efecto solo en las madres, lo que sugiere que la prominencia de las normas de género puede depender del contexto del hogar. En cuanto a la crianza de los hijos, encontramos que, aunque la oferta laboral de las mujeres que ganan más que sus maridos responde inicialmente a la maternidad menos que la aquellas que ganan menos, los dos grupos convergen después de 10 años. Además, las mujeres de la primera categoría muestran un aumento desproporcionadamente grande en la proporción de tareas domésticas que realizan después de convertirse en madres. Estos resultados indican que las normas de género aún prevalecen sobre consideraciones de ventaja comparativa, y que la presencia de hijos empuja a las mujeres a buscar compensar el rompimiento de una norma adhiriéndose a otra.


Detalles Bibliográficos
2021
Gender identity norms
Relative income
Female labor supply
Motherhood
Normas de identidad de género
Ingresos relativos
Oferta laboral femenina
Maternidad
ECONOMIA DE GENERO
MICROECONOMIA
EMPLEO
Inglés
Universidad de la República
COLIBRI
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12008/30180
Acceso abierto
Licencia Creative Commons Atribución - No Comercial - Sin Derivadas (CC - By-NC-ND 4.0)
Resumen:
Sumario:Gendered norms have major implications for women’s labor market outcomes. Notably, a recent literature finds that child-rearing norms and the prescription that the husband should be the main breadwinner lead to behavioral changes affecting women's labor supply. Motherhood reduces participation and hours of market work, while women who earn more than their husbands have been shown to react in ways that reverse that gap. In this paper we use panel data for the US to examine to what extent these two different norms interact. We start by asking whether child-rearing norms affect women who are the main breadwinner and those who are not in the same way, and then turn to how mothers and childless women react when breaking the male-as-the-breadwinner norm. Our results show that the breadwinner norm has an effect only on mothers, suggesting that the salience of gender norms may depend on the household's context. Concerning child-rearing, we find that although the labor supply of women who earn more than their husbands initially responds to motherhood less than that of secondary earners, the two groups converge after 10 years. Moreover, women in the former category exhibit a disproportionately large increases in the share of housework they perform after becoming mothers. These results indicate that norms still prevail over considerations of comparative advantage, and that the presence of children pushes women to seek to compensate breaking a norm by adhering to another one.