Think Sexism, Perpetuate Sexism: How Husband’s Discriminatory Attitude Affects Wife’s Labor Market Outcomes

Based on four studies using four publicly available datasets with married men, we found that husbands who hold discriminatory attitudes against women are likely to dampen their wives’ labor market outcomes. We establish this using three cross-sectional datasets for different countries across the globe. We also use panel data for the UK that tracks the same individuals over the years to confirm our hypothesis. Results from all four studies suggest that if husbands hold sexist beliefs, their wives are less likely to work full-time, less like to work as long as a year; even if they do, they have lower occupational prestige and low income.