As overt discrimination has receded and human capital gaps have narrowed, economists have increasingly turned to gender norms to explain why women continue to earn less than men, shoulder the bulk of unpaid care work, and suffer earnings penalties following childbirth. This column discusses how gender norms – both those people internalise and those enforced by peers – act as powerful constraints on women’s labour market outcomes. Understanding how these norms form, persist, and can change has major implications for the design of effective labour market policy. The challenge is not merely to alter private preferences, but to shift shared expectations.

The past century has seen remarkable convergence in men’s and women’s educational attainment and labour force participation. Yet significant gender gaps persist. Even in higher-income countries, women continue to earn less than men, shoulder the bulk of unpaid care work, and suffer large earnings penalties following childbirth (Cortés and Pan 2023). As overt discrimination has receded and human capital gaps have narrowed, economists have increasingly turned to a less visible but powerful force: gender norms.

In our recent paper, we provide a unified framework to understand how gender norms shape economic behaviour (Cortés et al. 2026). We distinguish between two mechanisms that are often conflated: internalised norms – the preferences and beliefs individuals carry within themselves – and external norms – the social pressure to conform to the behaviour and expectations of others. This distinction matters because the policy levers that shift preferences and beliefs are not necessarily the same as those that relax social pressure.

The persistence of internalised norms

Internalised norms are embedded in identity. They shape how individuals evaluate their own choices – what feels fulfilling or appropriate for a man or a woman. These norms are often transmitted vertically, from parents to children, and can persist even when institutions change.

A large body of research shows that cultural norms can persist across generations and across borders. Fernández and Fogli (2009) show that the labour supply of second-generation immigrant women in the US is strongly predicted by female labour force participation rates in their parents’ countries of origin decades earlier. These women grow up under the same US institutions and policies, yet their behaviour reflects inherited cultural beliefs. Norms travel with people.

Formative institutional environments also matter. Boelmann et al. (2025) exploit the historical division of Germany to show that West German women who had previously lived in East Germany and then returned West continued to work more after childbirth than other West German mothers. This ‘return migrant’ result shows that earlier exposure had updated their internalised beliefs, not merely their conformity to local social pressure. Even when institutional conditions converge, beliefs formed during formative years leave a lasting imprint.

Gender norms, therefore, may persist even when economic incentives change. They are embedded in identities – and therefore slow to change.

External norms and coordination failure

Yet, internal beliefs are only part of the story. Even individuals who privately hold egalitarian views may behave traditionally because of external norms – the desire to fit in or avoid stigma.

This dynamic can generate coordination failures. A prominent example is paternity leave. Many men express a desire to take longer parental leave, yet actual take-up often remains low. Johnson et al.(2024) describe workplace dynamics as an ‘implicit tournament’, where visibility and continuous presence signal dedication. When few men take leave, doing so may signal lower commitment and carry career risks. As a result, many fathers hesitate to take leave unless others do the same. The outcome is a stable but inefficient equilibrium: few men take leave, even though many would prefer a more equal division of caregiving.

Coordination failure can also stem from pluralistic ignorance, where individuals privately disagree with a norm but mistakenly believe that most others support it. Bursztyn et al. (2020) document this phenomenon in Saudi Arabia. The majority of young married men privately supported women working outside the home but substantially underestimated how many of their peers felt the same way. When researchers provided accurate information about peer attitudes, men became significantly more likely to help their wives search for jobs. Correcting misperceptions alone shifted behaviour.

In such cases, norms persist not because individuals endorse them, but because deviating from them appears costly.

Shifting gender norms

These findings reframe the role of policy. Policies do not only change incentives; they can also serve as coordination devices. When a reform encourages some individuals to become early adopters – say, fathers taking parental leave – it can lower the perceived social cost of that behaviour. As more men take leave, conformity pressure weakens, triggering a snowball effect. What begins as a marginal policy shift can cascade into broader norm change. The Nordic ‘daddy quotas’, which reserve non-transferable parental leave for fathers, illustrate this mechanism (Dahl et al. 2014). By normalising paternal leave-taking, these policies reduce stigma and generate social multipliers as behaviour spreads through peer networks.

However, policy is only one channel through which norms can change. Education, role models, media exposure, and institutional change can also reshape beliefs about gender roles. Education can be particularly powerful because it shapes beliefs during formative years, when attitudes about gender roles are still developing. In India, classroom discussions about gender equality led students to adopt more egalitarian attitudes that persisted years after the intervention (Dhar et al. 2022). Role models can shift expectations as well. Exposure to female village leaders reduced gender bias in parents’ aspirations and narrowed schooling gaps (Beaman et al. 2012), even without directly altering labour market incentives.

Mass media can operate at scale. In Brazil, soap operas portraying smaller families were followed by measurable declines in fertility (La Ferrara et al. 2012). Media influences not only individuals’ beliefs, but also their perceptions of what others believe.

Finally, institutional reforms – such as pay transparency mandates or stronger anti-discrimination enforcement – can weaken the feedback loop between biased expectations and economic outcomes. When institutions reward women’s skills more equitably or normalise fathers’ caregiving, they gradually shift which behaviours are seen as legitimate and expected.

Open questions and policy lessons

Despite substantial progress in understanding gender norms, important questions remain.

First, the pace of change across different dimensions of gender norms is uneven. Attitudes toward women’s education and employment have liberalised rapidly in many countries, whereas norms governing caregiving and household responsibility have shifted more slowly. This asymmetry creates structural tension: women’s economic opportunities expand faster than expectations about family roles adapt. In several high-income countries, such tensions are linked to the decline in marriage and fertility (Hwang 2016). Why some gender norms change rapidly while others remain persistent remains an important open question.

Second, we still lack a systematic understanding of the relevant reference groups – the ‘Joneses’ whose behaviour individuals care about. Workplace colleagues may shape labour supply decisions; family members may enforce caregiving norms; neighbourhood peers may influence fertility choices. Effective policy design requires identifying which social networks sustain which norms.

Third, masculinity norms remain comparatively understudied. Gender inequality is not sustained solely by constraints on women; it is also reinforced by expectations imposed on men.

While these questions remain open, the existing evidence already carries important lessons for policy. Because norms operate through social interactions, policies that target individuals in isolation may be insufficient. Durable change may require interventions that coordinate entire groups. The challenge is not merely to alter private preferences, but to shift shared expectations.

Gender norms are deeply embedded – but they are socioeconomic forces, not fixed laws of nature. Understanding how internal beliefs and external pressures interact is essential if societies are to close the remaining gender gaps and move toward a more equitable equilibrium.

Source : VOXeu