Working Paper: NBER ID: w26693
Authors: Monira Essa Aloud; Sara Alrashood; Ina Ganguli; Basit Zafar
Abstract: How important are social norms, information gaps and family constraints in explaining the low rates of female labor force participation (FLFP) in conservative societies? To answer this question, we conducted a field experiment embedded in a survey of female university students at a large public university in Saudi Arabia. We randomly provided one subset of individuals with information on the labor market and aspirations of their female peers (T1), while another subset was provided with this information along with a prime that made their parents more salient (T2). We find that expectations of working among those in the Control group are quite high, yet students underestimate the expected labor force attachment of their female peers. We show that social information matters: relative to the Control group, expectations about own labor force participation are significantly higher in the T1 group, which is driven primarily by receiving information about their peers’ aspirations. We show that T2, as intended, causes students to report a higher importance of parents’ approval of their choices. However, we do not find that the impact of information is counteracted by evoking parental expectations: impacts for the T2 group on labor market expectations are not smaller than those for T1 group. However, T2 does lead to higher expectations of working in Education and the Public sectors - sectors that are more socially acceptable for women, suggesting that parental expectations their daughters’ labor market aspirations but partly shape them.
Keywords: female labor force participation; social norms; information gaps; Saudi Arabia
JEL Codes: D80; D83; J10; J20; Z10
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Social information (T1) (Z13) | Expectations of own labor force participation (J29) |
| Parental expectations (T2) (J13) | Expectations of working in education and public sectors (J45) |
| Social information (T1) + Parental expectations (T2) (I24) | Expectations of working (J29) |
| Working mothers (J16) | Impacts from treatments (I12) |
| T1 treatment does not diminish T2 treatment effects (C22) | T1 and T2 treatments (C22) |