Misperceived Social Norms: Women Working Outside the Home in Saudi Arabia
American Economic Review
vol. 110,
no. 10, October 2020
(pp. 2997-3029)
Abstract
We show that the vast majority of young married men in Saudi Arabia privately support women working outside the home (WWOH) and substantially underestimate support by other similar men. Correcting these beliefs increases men's (costly) willingness to help their wives search for jobs. Months later, wives of men whose beliefs were corrected are more likely to have applied and interviewed for a job outside the home. In a recruitment experiment with a local company, randomly informing women about actual support for WWOH leads them to switch from an at-home temporary enumerator job to a higher-paying, outside-the-home version of the job.Citation
Bursztyn, Leonardo, Alessandra L. González, and David Yanagizawa-Drott. 2020. "Misperceived Social Norms: Women Working Outside the Home in Saudi Arabia." American Economic Review, 110 (10): 2997-3029. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20180975Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D83 Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
- J16 Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
- J22 Time Allocation and Labor Supply
- O15 Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
- Z13 Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification