@EdWorkingPaper{ai22-672, title = "Stay-at-Home Peer Mothers and Gender Norms: Short-run Effects on Educational Outcomes", author = "Bobby Chung, Liwen Chen, Guangwha Wang", institution = "Annenberg Institute at Brown University", number = "672", year = "2022", month = "November", URL = "http://www.edworkingpapers.com/ai22-672", abstract = {Increased exposure to gender-role information affects a girl's educational performance. Utilizing the classroom randomization in Chinese middle schools, we find that the increased presence of stay-at-home peer mothers significantly reduces a girl's performance in mathematics. This exposure also cultivates gendered attitudes towards mathematics and STEM professions. The influence of peer mothers increases with network density and when the girl has a distant relationship with her parents. As falsification tests against unobserved confounding factors, we find that the exposure to stay-at-home peer mothers does not affect boys' performance, nor do we find that stay-at-home peer fathers affect girls' outcomes.}, }