 The Arab Spring, a setback for gender equality? Evidence from the Gallup World PollRobert Rudolf, Shun Wang () and Fengyu Wu Journal of Asian Economics, 2023, vol. 84, issue C Abstract: Combining a unique dataset from the Gallup World Poll for the period 2009–2018 with Wolfsfeld et al.’s (2013) protest index, we evaluate the impact of the Arab Spring pro-democracy protests on gender equality in eleven Middle Eastern and North African countries. We use a difference-in-differences approach and find a negative impact of mass protests on female access to labor markets and support for women’s rights in the years following the events. In particular, a one-standard-deviation increase in the protest intensity lowered female participation rates by 3.7 % points. Likewise, Arab Spring protests significantly lowered support for women’s legal rights, occupational rights, and divorce rights. Findings are robust to different samples, alternative model specifications, omitted variable bias, and an alternative protest measure from Steinert-Threlkeld (2017). Regarding potential mechanisms, we suggest that a shift in the Arab zeitgeist towards a less secular society might help explain our findings. Keywords: Female labor force participation; Arab Spring; Gender equality; Secularism; Middle East and North Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:asieco:v:84:y:2023:i:c:s1049007822001348 DOI: 10.1016/j.asieco.2022.101578 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Asian Economics is currently edited by C. Wiemer More articles in Journal of Asian Economics from Elsevier |
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