Gender norms and adolescents’educational and career aspirations and expectations: Evidence from a survey experiment in Ghana

Abstract

This study evaluates the influence of priming gender norms on adolescents’ self-reported educational and career aspirations and expectations in Ghana. We do so through a survey experiment with a sample of about 2400 adolescents. In the experiment, we assess whether making gender norms more salient will lead female adolescents to report having lower aspirations and expectations in educational attainment, less interest in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) careers, higher interest in female dominated careers, and lower career expectations, consistent with the predictions of the stereotype threat theory. For male adolescents, we test whether the converse is true, consistent with the predictions of the stereotype lift theory. Further, we assess whether such treatment effects are different by adolescent age, parental characteristics (socio-economic status: educational attainment and wealth levels, and gender bias), and enumerator gender. We find mainly null main and heterogeneous treatment effects, with few significant heterogeneous treatment effects that show the nuanced effects of gender norms in our sample. Our findings also speak to survey design, specifically questions order effects and experimenter demand effects, by showing that modules on aspirations and expectations appear relatively immune to survey response effects from priming gender norms and hence unproblematic for survey design.