Maybe so:
Using thousands of essays written by 11-year-olds in 1969, we created an index to measure girls’ compliance with the most prevalent gender norms in Britain. We link this indicator to life cycle outcomes. Conditional on 11 age covariates, a one standard deviation increase in our index predicts a 3.5% decrease in lifetime earnings, due to lower wages and fewer hours worked. Education, work and family structure mediate part of this decline. Holding skills constant, girls who conform less to gender norms live in regions with higher female employment and university attendance, highlighting the role of the environment in which girls grow up.
That’s according to a new NBER working paper on
Source link