Women hold up half the sky? Gender identity and the wife's labor market performance in China

In this paper, we empirically study the impact of gender identity on the wife's labor supply in China where a high female employment rate and a large population that has a traditional gender identity coexist. We find that the wife's gender identity affects her labor force participation for all cohorts, and the wife's gender identity affects earnings only for rural cohorts. The impact of gender identity varies among generational, regional, and educational cohorts. Husbands still guide their wives, i.e., a husband's gender identity affects his wife's labor force participation and earnings.