plow use to be negatively associated with current attitudes towards gender equality, and female participation in labor, politics, and entrepreneurial activities. Therefore, the work of Alesina, Giuliano and Nunn (2013) suggests that norms around gender roles may have been established even earlier in the pre-industrial period.

Restrictive or conservative gender norms may translate into behaviors that disadvantage female labor supply and earnings, and/or discourage male engagement in childcare and household chores. Norms are expected to influence behavior through expectations of what others in your reference group do or approve of (Gauri, Rahman and Sen, 2019). In addition, when measuring gender beliefs, there may be expectations that men and women should play different roles in society (gender role beliefs) and that men and women are essentially different (gender category beliefs). The questions included in the Survey on Gender Equality at Home mainly capture measures of gender role beliefs rather than measures of beliefs in gender essentialism. Both genders may face norms costs imposed by those community members who disapprove of certain behaviors that contradict the expectations of the roles of men and women in their society (Bernhardt et al., 2018). Women or men who defy stereotypical norms potentially do so at a personal cost. For example, Bertrand, Kamenica and Pan (2015) show in the US that it is relatively unlikely that a woman will earn more than her husband, and when she does, marital satisfaction is lower and divorce is more likely. Friedson-Ridenour and Pierotti (2019) find that some women in Ghana explicitly limit their business growth in order to reinforce their husband’s role as a primary provider. In addition, for many men, engaging in care and housework is inconsistent with male gender roles and indicates weakness; and when men feel threatened in their role as providers, they may be even less inclined to engage in behavior associated with female gender roles (Munoz-Boudet et al., 2013).<sup>6</sup> A first contribution of the paper is to provide global evidence on attitudes and norms concerning gender stereotypical roles reported by both men and women. In the paper we begin by conducting cross-country comparisons of personal attitudes and perceived community norms with respect to a broad norm on gender equality in opportunities, and the male breadwinner norm and female caregiver norm. Descriptive findings suggest that gender attitudes and norms vary widely across countries and within countries. For instance, the proportion of respondents that agree with the male breadwinner norm statement ranges from 11% (in Denmark) to 78% (in the Arab Republic of Egypt).<sup>7</sup> This compares to a country average in the perceived community norm of 28% (in Denmark) and 69% (in Egypt).<sup>8</sup>

> 6For instance, Bernhardt et al. (2018) find that the majority (70%) of married men in rural India perceive themselves to be the main recipient of social punishment if their wife was working for pay; whereas married women think the social cost is more evenly shared between spouses.

> 7A lower average percentage represents more gender liberal beliefs in that country.

> 8This translates to Egyptian men and women in the sample perceiving that 69% of their community would agree with the male breadwinner norm.

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