Submission 191
Misperception in Gender Social Norms and its Impact on Women's Empowerment: Evidence from Pakistan
PS2-G08-03
Presented by: Romasa Ali
This study examines gender social norms as a potential cause behind the weak trends of women empowerment in Pakistan. We conduct a national survey to measure individuals' beliefs about women's empowerment across the dimensions of finance and decision-making power. We find that while the true support for women empowerment is high, people significantly underestimate this support in the society. Additionally, there is a significant difference between men's misperception and women's misperception about society's support. We also find that men's underestimation of this support in other men is higher than that of women's. We aim to correct this misperception by providing relevant information from the survey to two samples that form the extensive and intensive margins of the experiment. We hypothesize that given this new information, individuals will update their beliefs in the direction of support for empowering women which will, subsequently, impact their behavior. As we primarily want to empower women financially (which will ultimately impact their bargaining power), individuals will be given an incentivized choice between signing up for a Rosca or a gift voucher. If the respondent is a male, he will be given the same choice but for a female member from his household. This choice will serve as a proxy measure for changes in behavior following the changes in beliefs and it will be measured in an endline survey.