Protection for Whom? The Political Economy of Protective Labor Laws for Women
Matthias Doepke,
Hanno Foerster,
Anne Hannusch and
Michele Tertilt
No 33720, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Abstract:
During the first half of the twentieth century, many US states enacted laws restricting women's labor market opportunities, including maximum hours restrictions, minimum wage laws, and night-shift bans. The era of so-called protective labor laws came to an end in the 1960s as a result of civil rights reforms. In this paper, we investigate the political economy behind the rise and fall of these laws. We argue that the main driver behind protective labor laws was men's desire to shield themselves from labor market competition. We spell out the mechanism through a politico-economic model in which singles and couples work in different sectors and vote on protective legislation. Restrictions are supported by single men and couples with male sole earners who compete with women for jobs. We show that the theory's predictions for when protective legislation will be introduced are well supported by US state-level evidence.
JEL-codes: D13 D72 D78 E24 J12 J16 N30 O10 O43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-his, nep-lab and nep-pol
Note: DAE EFG LS POL
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33720.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.
Related works:
Working Paper: Protection for Whom? The Political Economy of Protective Labor Laws for Women (2025) 
Working Paper: Protection for Whom? The Political Economy of Protective Labor Laws for Women (2025) 
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33720
Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33720
The price is Paper copy available by mail.
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().