Low Promotability Tasks Among Young Parents

Last registered on May 04, 2026
View Trial History

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Low Promotability Tasks Among Young Parents
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0018331
Initial registration date
April 30, 2026

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
May 04, 2026, 8:15 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country
Italy
Region

Primary Investigator

Name
Héloïse Cloléry
Affiliation
CREST, Ecole Polytechnique
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Alessandra Casarico
PI Affiliation
Bocconi University
Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2026-05-04
End date
2026-12-31
Keywords
Behavior, Gender, Labor
Additional Keywords
Gender; Low-Promotability Tasks; Survey Experiment; Child Penalty
JEL code(s)
J13; J16; M51; D90
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
Around the world, women continue to earn less than men and have worse labor market outcomes, and much of this gap emerges upon parenthood. One potential mechanism of penalties in the labour market for those parents that continue to work after childbirth is the unequal assignment and acceptance of low-promotability tasks, that is, tasks that benefit the organization but carry little weight in performance evaluations and promotion decisions.

This study examines whether gender and parenthood shape both the supply and the demand of low-promotability tasks in a broad working population. We implement a survey experiment in Italy with workers and managers. On the supply side, workers are given the opportunity to complete an optional task that benefits (mainly) students but does not affect their compensation. On the demand side, managers choose among worker profiles for this same task under alternative incentive schemes.

The study addresses two main questions. First, are women more likely than men to accept or be selected for a low-promotability task? Second, does parenthood, and in particular having a young child, affect these patterns differently for women and men?
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Casarico, Alessandra and Héloïse Cloléry. 2026. "Low Promotability Tasks Among Young Parents." AEA RCT Registry. May 04. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.18331-1.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
We conduct a two-stage survey experiment to study gender and parenthood differences in low-promotability tasks. Prior to the main experiment, we collect data from a separate pre-sample to generate reference responses used in a conformity task. In Stage 1, workers decide whether to complete an optional, unpaid task, which provides a behavioral measure of task acceptance. In Stage 2, managers choose among worker profiles in repeated, incentivized decisions to assign the same task under quantity and quality incentives. This design allows us to separately identify supply-side behavior and demand-side assignment patterns.
Intervention Start Date
2026-05-04
Intervention End Date
2026-12-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
The main supply-side outcome is a binary indicator equal to 1 if the worker accepts the low-promotability task, defined as providing a non-empty answer to at least one optional question, and 0 otherwise.
The main demand-side outcome is the managers' choices between different candidates at each round.
The primary demand-side outcome is a binary indicator equal to 1 if a manager selects a worker profile in a decision round, and 0 otherwise.
Each manager makes 10 choices among 3 profiles, yielding a panel dataset at the manager–profile–round level.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
The low-promotability task consists in a series of 8 questions to answer to help guide students in their career choices. There is a limit of 500 characters per question.
Each managers plays for 10 rounds. At each round, they have to choose one worker among the three shown to them.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
We consider the following secondary supply-side outcomes:
- the number of optional questions answered (ranging from 0 to 8)
- the total word count across all optional answers
- the worker-level helpfulness score
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We conduct a two-stage survey experiment to study gender and parenthood differences in low-promotability tasks. Prior to the main experiment, we collect data from a separate pre-sample to generate reference responses used in a conformity task. In Stage 1, workers decide whether to complete an optional, unpaid task, which provides a behavioral measure of task acceptance. In Stage 2, managers choose among worker profiles in repeated, incentivized decisions to assign the same task under quantity and quality incentives. This design allows us to separately identify supply-side behavior and demand-side assignment patterns.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Randomization done by a computer
Randomization Unit
Individual level
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
200 participants for the pre-sample.
500 workers for stage 1 of the main study.
250 managers for stage 2 of the main study.
Sample size: planned number of observations
500 observations for stage 1 7500 observations for stage 2 (250 managers make 10 decisions over 3 different profiles)
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
250 workers will see mandatory task first, 250 will see the optional task first.
125 managers will be in the "quantity" treatment, 125 managers will be in the "quality" treatment.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Power calculations indicate that the study is sufficiently powered to detect main effects of gender and parenthood on the supply side, but has more limited power to detect differences across the three parenthood categories (young parents versus older parents). To address this limitation, we pre-specify a secondary specification in which parenthood is coded as a binary variable equal to 1 if the worker has at least one child and 0 otherwise. This specification provides a more powerful test of whether the gender gap in low-promotability task acceptance differs between parents and non-parents, at the cost of not distinguishing between young and older children.
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Bocconi Research Ethics Committee
IRB Approval Date
2026-03-19
IRB Approval Number
EA001171
Analysis Plan