Abstract

We investigate whether depressed entitlement – the phenomenon that women expect lower wages than man due to internalized gender stereotypes – also occurs within couples, where women and men presumably know each other best. We exploit data from an experiment where spouses had to reveal their own wage demand and assess the wage demand of their partner for the same task. We find that the variance in expected wage differences between spouses is related to opportunity costs and actual gender role behavior, even though on average spouses do not differ in their actual or expected wage demands. This seems to confirm depressed entitlement through the stereotypical reproduction of gendered wage beliefs.