Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/320516 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 17922
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Gender imbalance in time spent on child rearing causes gender inequalities in labor market outcomes, human capital accumulation, and economic mobility. We conduct a large-scale field experiment with a near-universe of US schools to investigate a potential source of this inequality: external demands for parental involvement. Schools receive an email from a fictitious two-parent household with a general inquiry and are asked to call one of the parents back. Mothers are 1.4 times more likely than fathers to be contacted. We decompose this inequality into discrimination stemming from differential beliefs about parents' responsiveness versus other factors and demonstrate that the gender gap in external demands is associated with various measures of gender norms. We also show that signaling father's availability substantially changes the gender pattern of callbacks. Our findings underscore a process through which agents outside the household contribute to within-household gender inequalities.
Subjects: 
field experiment
gender gap
discrimination
JEL: 
J16
J71
C93
J22
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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