Despite progress in gender equality, significant labour market disparities persist, particularly impacting mothers after childbirth. This column investigates how cultural norms influence women’s labour supply decisions in reunified Germany. The authors find that East German women maintain higher employment rates post-birth, even after migrating to the West, reflecting the resilience of egalitarian norms. Conversely, West German migrants adopt more egalitarian behaviours in East Germany, suggesting that exposure to supportive environments facilitates cultural adoption. The findings highlight the need to consider cultural dynamics in addressing gender inequalities in the labour market.
Despite significant progress in gender equality over the past decades, substantial gender gaps in labour market outcomes persist across all developed countries. While the labour supply of mothers greatly increased throughout the 1970s and 1980s, it has plateaued – and even slightly decreased in some countries – over the past 10 to 30 years (Goldin 2006, Kuziemko et al. 2020). Recent research has highlighted that the arrival of children is one of the primary reasons for these persistent inequalities (Angelov et al. 2016, Kleven et al. 2019a). The magnitude of these ‘child penalties’, however, varies considerably across countries. For example, Kleven et al. (2019b) document the long-run drops in mothers’ earnings after childbirth, ranging from around 25% in Scandinavian countries to 31-44% in English-speaking countries, and up to 60% in German-speaking countries. This cross-country variation raises important questions about the role of cultural norms versus the role of institutions and policies in shaping mothers’ labour supply decisions.
In a recent paper, we investigate the role of cultural norms in shaping women’s labour supply decisions after childbirth within the context of reunified Germany (Boelmann et al. 2024). The German reunification brought the more gender egalitarian East German culture together with the more gender traditional West German one, under a common set of laws and policies. It further triggered large labour mobility of East and West Germans across the former border, resulting in many East and West German women suddenly encountering a new cultural environment in adulthood. We exploit this mobility to shed light on two aspects of cultural persistence and adoption: Does a woman’s childhood culture have a persistent impact on her labour supply decisions after having a child? Or do women adjust to a new cultural environment encountered as adults and change their labour market behaviour?
The tale of two Germanys: A natural experiment in gender norms
The division and subsequent reunification of Germany provides a unique setting to study the role of cultural norms in shaping women’s labour market decisions. After WWII, Germany was divided into two states. For over four decades, these two parts of Germany developed starkly different gender norms and policies. East Germany, under its socialist regime, actively promoted gender equality as a state goal. The government implemented policies to increase female labour force participation, expand public childcare, and support working mothers. By contrast, West Germany promoted a more traditional male-breadwinner model, with limited childcare options and tax policies that discouraged dual-earner families.
These contrasting approaches are illustrated in Figure 1, which shows advertisements for household products from the 1950s in West and East Germany. The West German advertisement depicts a happy housewife baking, while the East German advertisement shows a daughter preparing a quick dinner for when her mother returns from work, emphasising the different cultural expectations for women in the two societies.
Figure 1 Mama vs Mutti: Advertising in the 1950s
Note: The figure depicts an example from advertisements for household products in West (panel A) and East (panel B) Germany in the 1950s. The text in Part A from 1950 translates as “Baking is fun using BACKIN”. The text in Part B from 1955 translates as “Mom is coming home in 10 minutes… Using ready-made dishes by KONSUM allows one to prepare a good meal in the shortest period of time”.
Source: Part A: Oetker-Firmenarchiv S2/86. Part B: Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig PL 55/11.
Even decades after reunification in 1990, when East Germany adopted West Germany’s laws and policies, significant differences in gender attitudes and labour market behaviour persisted. Figure 2 illustrates this persistence, showing that among mothers who give birth in 2003, 13 years after reunification, East German mothers consistently have higher rates of return to work after childbirth compared to their West German counterparts. By the time the child is seven and in school, East German mothers are nearly 20 percentage points more likely to work than West German mothers.
Figure 2 Share of mothers who have returned to work after childbirth: East versus West German Mothers
Note: This figure shows the return-to-work behaviour after childbirth for East and West German first-time mothers who took maternity leave in 2003.
New insights on cultural persistence and adoption
Our analysis is based on administrative data that encompasses the complete work histories of half of the female population in Germany. We follow women who migrated between reunited East and West Germany, as well as those who later returned to their original location. We then compare changes in their labour supply behaviour after having a child with changes of East and West German mothers in the same local labour market, and even the same workplace, who did not migrate (‘stayers’).
Our results show a striking asymmetry in the persistence of childhood culture when immersed in a different environment as an adult, as illustrated in Figure 3. East German women who migrate to West Germany and give birth there continue to exhibit a higher labour force participation than their West German colleagues, showing the strong persistence of gender-egalitarian norms. Specifically, four years after childbirth, East German migrants are 8 percentage points more likely to be employed compared to West German women with similar pre-birth characteristics in the same local labour market and workplace.
Figure 3 The effect of persistence and adoption of culture on maternal labour supply
Note: The figure shows the relatively more persistent positive effect of a gender-egalitarian over a gender-traditional childhood culture on maternal labour supply (left-hand side), and the stronger adoption of a more gender-egalitarian culture during adulthood, which increases maternal labour supply, compared to a more gender-traditional one (right-hand side).
In contrast, West German women who migrate to East Germany almost entirely adjust their post-birth labour supply to match that of their East German colleagues. The employment gap between the two groups is small and not statistically significantly different from zero, as can be seen from the second bar of Figure 3. This asymmetry in cultural persistence suggests that more gender-egalitarian norms may be more resilient even in an environment less conducive to working mothers, such as West Germany where childcare availability is considerably lower than in the East.
West German migrants may behave similarly to East Germans because of the opportunities that the East German environment offers, most importantly more easily available childcare. Alternatively, West German migrants may update their values and beliefs about the role of mothers with increased exposure to the new current environment and thus internalise the new gender-egalitarian culture, which we refer to as ‘cultural adoption’. To disentangle the two, we examine ‘return migrants’ – individuals who spent at least 1.5 years in the other part of Germany before returning to and giving birth in their childhood region – and compare them to mothers who never left their childhood environment. The results are illustrated in the right-hand side of Figure 3. West German return migrants continue to be influenced by their experience in East Germany even after returning home. Specifically, they are five percentage points more likely to be employed when the child is four years old compared to West Germans who never left West Germany. This lasting effect of past exposure to a more gender-egalitarian culture points towards cultural adoption through, for example, learning from East German peers about balancing career and family.
In contrast, East German return migrants show no differences in their return-to-work decisions compared to East German mothers who never left, suggesting little cultural adoption of the more traditional West German norms.
This column provides new insights into the mechanisms through which cultural norms influence women’s labour market decisions. Our findings demonstrate that the adoption of gender norms and related labour supply decisions of mothers primarily go in one direction only, with more egalitarian norms being more readily adopted. Likewise, more gender-egalitarian norms are also harder to unlearn. Seeing the impact of maternal labour supply on children and mothers’ well-being is likely a key driver of this asymmetry. Social interactions between culturally diverse women thereby have the potential to change traditional gender norms and decrease existing gender inequalities in the labour market.
Source : VOXeu
