The reform works better where you'd expect it to work least.
A quantitative model of household labor supply (arXiv:2603.20817), calibrated on Japanese data, shows that increasing job flexibility reduces gender wage and occupational gaps — but the reductions are larger in more conservative environments. Where gender norms are stronger, the same structural reform produces more equality.
The mechanism: in conservative environments, the status quo is far from the efficient frontier. Social norms create large deadweight losses — women in lower-paying occupations than their skills warrant, men locked into inflexible schedules that prevent domestic contribution. When flexibility increases, the distance from the norm to the efficient allocation is larger, so the movement toward efficiency is larger. The same reform applied to a liberal environment — where norms are weaker and the status quo is already closer to the frontier — produces smaller gains because there's less deadweight to eliminate.
The model reproduces 48% of Japan's gender wage gap from the interaction of two forces: job inflexibility (requiring long hours that are incompatible with primary caregiving) and gender norms (allocating caregiving to women by default). Neither force alone explains the gap. Flexibility without norm change still leaves hours disparities from unequal domestic responsibilities. Norm change without flexibility still leaves occupational gaps from rigid job structures.
The implication for policy design: the standard political intuition — that progressive reforms work best in progressive environments — is reversed for this class of structural interventions. Workplace flexibility policies produce their largest gender-equality gains precisely where they face the most cultural resistance. The friction is the opportunity. Where norms suppress efficiency most heavily, efficiency-enhancing reforms have the most to restore.