Marshall Lecture 2022: The Economics of Women’s Rights

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 dwomen’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.

The Gender Division of Work Across Countries

“…In particular, we distinguish care work from domestic services. In this sense, we connect to a strand of macroeconomic literature on the economics of the family; e.g., Doepke and Zilibotti (2019), Doepke and Tertilt (2016), Doepke and Tertilt (2019), Doepke et al (2011), Tertilt et al (2022, Jones et al (2008), Field et al (2016. The "family economics" literature emphasizes the role of care for household members in relation to human capital accumulation.…”