The Economics of Woman's Rights The Mary Paley and Alfred Marshall Lecture

Michele Tertilt (), Matthias Doepke, Anne Hannusch () and Laura Montenbruck ()

CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series from University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany

Abstract: Two centuries ago, in most countries around the world, women were unable to vote, had no say over their own children or property, and could not obtain a divorce. Women have gradually gained rights in many areas of life, and this legal expansion has been closely intertwined with economic development. We aim to understand the drivers behind these reforms. To this end, we distinguish between four types of women’s rights—economic, political, labor, and body—and document their evolution over the past 50 years across countries. We summarize the political-economy mechanisms that link economic development to changes in women’s rights and show empirically that these mechanisms account for a large share of the variation in women’s rights across countries and over time

Keywords: Women's Rights; Female Suffrage; Family Economics; Bargaining; Political Economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 D72 E24 J12 J16 N30 N4 O10 O43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 58
Date: 2022-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-evo, nep-gen, nep-his and nep-pol
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2022_372

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