find and retain a job. To this end, we examine whether treatment effects are larger for respondents: 1) whose mothers worked when they were age 12; 2) in regions with more job opportunities (a larger formal sector); and 3) with less binding childcare responsibilities (those with children aged 6 or older).

Table 4 shows that when we compare individuals whose mothers worked (column 1) with those whose mother did not (column 2), we find little difference in treatment impact, suggesting that the absence of positive role models in childhood does not hamper the treatment’s effectiveness. The intervention impact is also similar in areas where there is high and low availability of formal employment opportunities (columns 3 and 4), showing that labor market opportunities do not affect the effectiveness of the intervention. There is however significant heterogeneity in intervention impact across families with and without pre-school children. Much larger effects are found for families in which women are not constrained by the presence of young children (p=0.05). For individuals who are in a household where the youngest child is over 6, participation in any of the treatments increases the probability of choosing the career mentoring course by 16 percentage points. This is a 55% increase relative to the control group. The treatment is effective, but less so, for respondents with younger children – 7.1 percentage point impact (20%). Once children start primary school, women are more likely to be able to look for work, reflecting the limited access to pre-primary school childcare in Indonesia.<sup>30</sup>

# **5.2.3 The Role of Misperceptions**

To further explore the way in which the interventions affected participant choices, following the previous literature, we examine whether those who underestimated the level of support in the community were more greatly impacted by the interventions (than those who estimated the level of support correctly or over-estimated it). Figure 5 shows the extent of misperceptions in the three domains of the interventions. The red line shows the actual level of support in the community (as measured in our first survey or the World Values Survey for older women’s attitudes). All three figures show that there was substantial, and varying, misperceptions in all three domains.

Table 5 presents results where we interact treatment with the extent to which respondents underestimated or overestimated the extent of community support for the social norms relevant to their treatment arm. For respondents in treatment arm 1 we allow the treatment impact to differ with the extent of over or underestimation of support for working women. For respondents in treatment 2 we allow for participants’ under/overestimation of support for working women and for shared childcare to affect the treatment

> 30These heterogeneity tests were not pre-specified. The pre-analysis plan specified tests of heterogeneity of treatment effects in relation to gender (presented in the main results above); education; religiosity; female respondents’ and male respondents’ wives’ pre-intervention labour force participation; preintervention attitudes to working women and shared childcare; and reasons the woman in the couple is not working. No heterogeneity was found along these dimensions. Results available on request.

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