The Economics of Women's Rights

Michele Tertilt, Matthias Doepke, Anne Hannusch and Laura Montenbruck

No 30617, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

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.

JEL-codes: D13 D72 J12 J16 N3 N40 O10 P0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-his, nep-hpe, nep-lab and nep-pol
Note: EFG POL
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published as Michèle Tertilt & Matthias Doepke & Anne Hannusch & Laura Montenbruck, 2022. "The Economics of Women’s Rights," Journal of the European Economic Association, vol 20(6), pages 2271-2316.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w30617.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Economics of Women’s Rights (2022)
Working Paper: The Economics of Women's Rights (2022)
Working Paper: The economics of women’s rights (2022)
Working Paper: The Economics of Women's Rights (2022)
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:30617

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w30617

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 ().