Male Social Status and Women's Work

Bernhardt, Arielle; Field, Erica; Pande, Rohini; Rigol, Natalia; Schaner, Simone; Troyer-Moore, Charity

doi:10.1257/pandp.20181086

Cited by 70 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Recent data collected in India by Bernhardt et al (2018) on men's and women's preferences are in line with this hypothesis. They find that men are more likely than women to be opposed to women's work outside the home.…”

Section: Mate Guarding: Paternal Investment and Female Labour Marketsupporting

confidence: 55%

Evolution of the Family: Theory and Implications for Economics

Alger¹,

Cox²

2019

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance

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Which parent can be expected to be more altruistic toward their child, the mother or father? All else equal, can we expect older generation members to be more solicitous of younger family members or vice versa? Policy interventions often target recipients by demographic status: more money being put in the hands of mothers, say, or transfers of income from young to old via public pensions. Economics makes predictions about pecuniary incentives and behavior but tends to be agnostic about how, say, a post-menopausal grandmother might behave, just because she is a post-menopausal grandmother. Evolutionary theory fills this gap by analyzing how preferences of family members emerge from the Darwinian exigencies of “survive and reproduce.” Coin of the realm is so-called “inclusive fitness,” reproductive success of oneself plus that of relatives, weighted by closeness of the relationship. Appending basic biological traits onto considerations of inclusive fitness generates predictions about preferences of family members. A post-menopausal grandmother with a daughter just starting a family is predicted to care more about her daughter than the daughter cares about her, for example. Evolutionary theory predicts that mothers tend to be more altruistic toward children than fathers, and that close relatives would be inclined to provide more support to one another than distant relatives. An original case study is provided, which explains the puzzle of diverging marriage rates by education in terms of heterogeneity in preferences for commitment. Economists are justifiably loathe to invoke preferences to explain trends, since preference-based explanations can be concocted to explain just about anything. But the evolutionary approach does not permit just any invocation of preferences. The dictates of “survive and reproduce” sharply circumscribe the kinds of preference-related arguments that are admissible.

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Section: Mate Guarding: Paternal Investment and Female Labour Marketsupporting

confidence: 55%

Evolution of the Family: Theory and Implications for Economics

Alger¹,

Cox²

2019

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance

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“…One possibility is gender norms around work roles -in particular, the idea that a wife who works outside the home is a source of social stigma or shame for her husband, who is expected to earn enough to support his family (Boudet et al, 2012;Bernhardt et al, 2018). When internalized by women, such norms can directly lower their utility of working (see e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On Her Own Account: How Strengthening Women’s Financial Control Impacts Labor Supply and Gender Norms

et al. 2019

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Can greater control over earned income incentivize women to work and influence gender norms? In collaboration with Indian government partners, we provided rural women with individual bank accounts and randomly varied whether their wages from a public workfare program were directly deposited into these accounts or into the male household head's account (the status quo). Women in a random subset of villages were also trained on account use. In the short run, relative to women just offered bank accounts, those who also received direct deposit and training increased their labor supply in the public and private sectors. In the long run, gender norms liberalized: women who received direct deposit and training became more accepting of female work, and their husbands perceived fewer social costs to having a wife who works. These effects were concentrated in households with otherwise lower levels of, and stronger norms against, female work. Women in these households also worked more in the long run and became more empowered. These patterns are consistent with models of household decisionmaking in which increases in bargaining power from greater control over income interact with, and influence, gender norms.

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“…10 Our paper also speaks to a recent theoretical literature on social norms (e.g., Tirole, 2011, Ali andBénabou, 2016, andAcemoglu andJackson, Forthcoming) by documenting how new information may lead to updates in perceptions of norms and fast changes in behavior. and norms on economic outcomes (see Alesina et al (2013), Akerlof and Kranton (2000), Baldiga (2014), Bernhardt et al (2018), Bertrand et al (2015), Bordalo et al (2016), Bursztyn et al al (2017), Coffman (2014), Dohmen et al (2011), Eckel and Grossman (2008), Fernández and Fogli (2009), Fernández (2004), Fernández (2007) and Field et al (2016), and Jayachandran (2015) for a discussion of the literature studying the role of social norms in explaining gender inequality in developing countries). Our paper relates to the work by Fernández (2013), which studies the role of cultural changes in explaining the large increases in married women's labor force participation over the last century in the US.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%