  Research shows that women volunteer significantly more for tasks that people
prefer others to complete. Such tasks carry little monetary incentives because
of their very nature. We use a modified version of the volunteer's dilemma game
to examine if non-monetary interventions, particularly, social recognition can
be used to change the gender norms associated with such tasks. We design three
treatments, where a) a volunteer receives positive social recognition, b) a
non-volunteer receives negative social recognition, and c) a volunteer receives
positive, but a non-volunteer receives negative social recognition. Our results
indicate that competition for social recognition increases the overall
likelihood that someone in a group has volunteered. Positive social recognition
closes the gender gap observed in the baseline treatment, so does the
combination of positive and negative social recognition. Our results,
consistent with the prior literature on gender differences in competition,
suggest that public recognition of volunteering can change the default gender
norms in organizations and increase efficiency at the same time.
