Approval of Equal Rights and Gender - Differences in Well-Being

Women earn less than men but are not less satisfied with life. This paper NEWLINE explores whether norms regarding the appropriate pay for women compared to men NEWLINE may explain these findings. In order to capture the spatial variation in such norms, we NEWLINE take community level information on citizens’ approval of an equal rights amendment NEWLINE to the Swiss constitution as a proxy for the norm that “women and men shall have the NEWLINE right to equal pay for work of equal value”. We find that the gender wage gap is NEWLINE smaller where a larger fraction of the citizenry has voted in favor of equal pay. We NEWLINE also find that employed women are less (not more) satisfied with life in liberal NEWLINE communities where the gender wage gap is smaller. These findings are consistent NEWLINE with the idea that norms regarding the appropriate relative pay of women compared NEWLINE to men are shaping gender differences in well-being.