Gender roles and women’s labor market outcomes

Using the China General Social Survey data, we tried to examine the impact of gender roles on women’s labor market outcomes. We find that traditional gender roles emphasizing women’s responsibility for housework are negatively related to the employment rate and earnings of women. Although gender roles are persistent and transmit across generations, we find that women’s liberation movements during the planned economy period significantly reshape the concept of gender roles, where we take the intensity of local women’s liberation movements as the proxy variable by using local numbers of the National March 8th Women Pacesetters in 1960 and 1979. Using the intensity of local women’s liberation movements as instrument for gender roles, we find consistent evidences that the traditional gender roles decrease the likelihood of being employed and earnings of women.