Gender Inequality in School Demands for Parental Involvement

 Gender imbalance in time spent on child rearing causes gender inequalities in labor market outcomes, human capital accumulation, and economic mobility. This study reports on a large-scale field experiment with a near-universe of US schools to investigate a potential source of inequality: external demands for parental involvement. Schools receive an email from a fictitious two-parent household and are asked to call one of the parents back. Mothers are 1.4 times more likely than fathers to be contacted. This gender gap in external demands is associated with various measures of gender norms. Signaling a father’s availability substantially changes the gender pattern of callbacks. These findings underscore a process through which agents outside the household contribute to within-household gender inequalities.