Abstract
Does employment during motherhood change peoples preferences? We study whether the of employment during motherhood exerts an effect on attitudes towards gender norms, and more specifically, attitudes towards the impact of women's employment on children's wellbeing (which proxy traditional gender attitudes). Drawing on a large, representative and longitudinal data and an instrumental variable (IV) strategy that exploits a Bartik instrument for employment, we find that, that non-mothers who work and mothers who do not work are more likely to agree that pre-school children suffer if mothers work, which we proxy as having more traditional views. However, this is not the case when women both working and motherhood it does not significantly change women's attitudes. These results suggest that exogenous changes in employment during motherhood confirm individuals priors, and point towards the critical role of early life formation. That is, employment during motherhood is not a value changing experience but rather a value preserving experience. Hence, the so-called 'motherhood penalty' cannot be fully explained by a change in attitudes after employment during motherhood.
Highlights
Traditional economic explanations of human behavior assume that individual’s attitudes and values towards established norms1 pre-exist their behavior and life-experiences2
Attitudes towards social norms are influenced by early life experiences (Brewster & Padavic, 2000; Giuliano & Spilimbergo, 2014; Wilkie, 1993), and intergenerational transmission (Fernández & Fogli, 2009), there is some scope for chage from small level local community interventions (Archaya, 2004) and especially, from lifeexperiences (Danigelis et al, 2007; Mason & Lu, 1988) that influences them
Its suggests that female employment increases the strengths of the attitudes to gender roles captures by the the value of the statement on ‘working mothers’; that is, if the woman works, she is less in agreement with the statement that pre-school child suffers if mother works
Summary
Traditional economic explanations of human behavior assume that individual’s attitudes and values towards established norms pre-exist their behavior and life-experiences. It has been established that sometimes the latter (behaviour) might not coincide with the former (norms), which might lead to cognitive dissonance processes (Akerlof & Dickens, 1982). Attitudes towards social norms are influenced by early life experiences (Brewster & Padavic, 2000; Giuliano & Spilimbergo, 2014; Wilkie, 1993), and intergenerational transmission (Fernández & Fogli, 2009), there is some scope for chage from small level local community interventions (Archaya, 2004) and especially, from lifeexperiences (Danigelis et al, 2007; Mason & Lu, 1988) that influences them. This paper is aims to understand whether women change their attitudes towards gender norms after the experience of employment and motherhood
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