Men, women, and the ballot: Gender imbalances and suffrage extensions in the United States

Sebastian Braun and Michael Kvasnicka

Explorations in Economic History, 2013, vol. 50, issue 3, 405-426

Abstract: Women's suffrage led to one of the greatest enfranchisements in history. Voting rights, however, were not won by force or threats thereof, a fact leading political economy theories find hard to explain. Studying the timing of suffrage extensions in US states between 1869 and 1919, we find that a scarcity of women strongly promoted early transitions to women's suffrage. Such scarcity significantly reduced the political costs and risks for male grantors of the suffrage. It might also have made women's suffrage attractive as a means to attract more women.

Keywords: Woman suffrage; Democratization; Political economy; Power sharing; Sex ratio (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 J16 K10 N41 N42 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014498313000119
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:eee:exehis:v:50:y:2013:i:3:p:405-426

DOI: 10.1016/j.eeh.2013.04.001

Access Statistics for this article

Explorations in Economic History is currently edited by R.H. Steckel

More articles in Explorations in Economic History from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().