Male Social Status and Women's Work

摘要

Female labor force participation varies significantly across cultural groups within the same country and among countries with similar levels of economic development (Fernandez and Fogli 2009). Recent studies have emphasized that cultural values and gender norms-standards describing desirable behavior-are important determinants of women's work (see, for instance, Alesina, Giuliano, and Nunn 2013; Fernandez 2013; Bertrand, Kamenica, and Pan 2015).This literature has focused on how aggregate, community-level attitudes relate to rates of female labor supply. But the impact of community norms on individual work behavior is likely mediated by intra-household dynamics-for example, both men and women could face norm-driven social costs if a wife works.When men and women bear different costs of violating norms, intra-household bargaining will mediate the role that norms play in governing female labor supply. Observational data suggests this may be the case: in 75 of the 76 countries covered by the World Values Survey, women express more support for female labor than men.2 Yet the relationships between norms, men and women's personal preferences, and women's actual employment decisions are not well understood.