Women’s Rights: What’s in it for Men?

I'd be interested in hearing other theories as to why power relationships between men and women change as economies develop. Here's one argument:

Women’s rights: What’s in it for men?, by Matthias Doepke and Michèle Tertilt, Project Syndicate: Improving women’s rights is one of the main goals of development policy; the United Nations names “promoting gender equality and empowering women” as one of the eight Millennium Development Goals. As Figure 1 shows, today most rich countries are close to the ideal of gender equality, while in the poorest countries women have only limited rights and face widespread discrimination. What, if anything, can development policy do to close the gap in gender equality between rich and poor countries?

Figure 1. Gender Institutions and Development Index versus GDP per capita, 2000

Note: The GID is a composite index that aggregates indicators in the areas of family, physical integrity, civil liberty, and ownership rights. Higher numbers correspond to more discrimination. Source: OECD GID Data Base, 2006. GDP per capita is PPP-adjusted and measured in U.S. Dollars. Source: World Development Indicators Online Edition, 2005. Figure excludes major oil producers.

The political-economy perspective on women’s rights

Pessimists argue that differences in gender discrimination across countries are due to cultural and religious factors that neither can nor should be addressed by policy. But this view clashes with an important observation: When today’s rich countries were still poor, the state of women’s rights in these countries was just as bleak as it is in the poorest countries today. For example, until the mid-nineteenth century, women in England and the United States lost all their civil rights upon marriage. Husbands had full control over their wives’ property and earnings, only men could obtain a divorce, and married women did not have any rights with respect to their legitimate children.

The situation improved only in the second half of the nineteenth century, when England and the United States started a series of reforms that ultimately led to the modern state of equality before the law. The rapid advance of women’s rights in today’s rich countries suggests that it is not some immutable cultural reason that explains cross-country differences in gender equality, but an interaction of women’s rights with the development process itself.

Understanding what triggered reforms of women’s rights in Western countries can inform our thinking about how gender equality might be realised in developing countries today. In recent research, we look at the driving forces behind the first phase of the expansion of women’s rights in England and the United States (Doepke and Tertilt 2008). From about 1850 onwards, various legislatures in both countries passed laws that dramatically improved women’s rights in the areas of divorce law, child custody law, and marital property law. Interestingly, these reforms took place long before women gained the right to vote.[1] All the reform laws of this period were passed by all-male legislatures that were accountable only to male voters. This fact suggests that to explain the expansion of women’s rights, we need to focus on the views and attitudes of men.

Why did men decide to share power with women?

The main reforms of women’s rights during the nineteenth century reduced the power of husbands within the household. At the beginning of the century, husbands were still patriarchs with full control over their families’ affairs. By 1900, power was shared almost equally (at least according to the letter of the law) between husbands and wives.

At face value, granting rights to women implied a weakening of men’s rights. Yet it was men who put all the reform laws into place. Why? Our argument is that, from a man’s perspective, there is a trade-off between the rights of his own wife and the rights of other men’s wives. More female bargaining power cuts the share of household consumption that husbands can claim for themselves, which men don’t like. But at the same time, women tend to attach more weight to the well-being of children than men do, which implies that more bargaining power for women also means greater investments in their children’s human capital.[2]

Husbands don’t gain directly from their wives having more bargaining power, so ideally men would prefer their own wives to have no rights. But since boosting women’s bargaining power increases human-capital investment in children, men might gain from other women having rights in two ways. First, men are altruistic towards their own children, some of which are daughters. Since men want their daughters to be treated well by their sons-in-law and they want their grandchildren to be well educated, men have a motivation to improve their daughters’ bargaining position. Second, a father prefers his children to find high-quality mates, and therefore stands to gain from building the human capital of his future children-in-law through their mothers.

Human capital and technological change

In England and the United States, we claim, the ultimate cause of the expansion of women’s rights throughout the nineteenth century was technological change that increased the demand for human capital. This demand raised the importance of education and recalibrated the trade-off between the rights of a man’s own wife and those of other men’s wives. When the return to education increases, finding well-educated spouses for one’s children becomes a bigger concern. Similarly, a rising return to education increases fathers’ concern about the rights of their daughters, because the daughters’ marital bargaining power matters for the grandchildren’s education.

Our explanation lines up well with historical evidence. The main phase of the expansion of women’s rights in England and the United States in the late nineteenth century coincided with rapidly increasing investments in education, suggesting that a rise in the demand for human capital was indeed significant.

What is more, growing concern for the education and welfare of children shows up in the historical debates about the major reforms of women’s rights during the nineteenth century. There was a gradual shift in the arguments, from a focus on the rights of men towards giving top priority to the needs of children.

Opponents of reform argued that men holding all power in the household was the natural order and that any changes would endanger the institution of the family. As late as 1868 an editorial writer for the London Times claimed that “the proposed change would totally destroy the existing relation between husband and wife… If a woman has her own property, and can apply to her separate use her own earnings,… what is to prevent her from going where she likes and doing what she pleases?”[3]

The supporters of reform countered that not all husbands are responsible and that giving power to women would protect the interests of the children. In a debate about Oregon’s Married Women’s Property Act it was argued (by a man, of course) that “If he [the husband] was prudent and thrifty she would give him control of her property. And if he was not, it was better that she should have the power to preserve her property to support herself and educate her children”.[4]

Lessons for policy

Our theory suggests that the historical advance of women’s rights in the West wasn’t due to a sudden enlightenment of mankind after millennia of patriarchy. Rather, it was driven by old-fashioned self-interest deriving from men’s concern about their daughters’ welfare and their descendants’ education.[5] But lest we lose faith in mankind, there is an upside. If our theory is correct, it implies that men in today’s developing countries can be given a stake in women’s rights. Ultimately, inducing developing countries to improve women’s rights on their own accord may be a more promising strategy than trying to impose gender equality from the outside.

From the perspective of the theory, what matters for the advance of women’s rights is the demand for human capital. The data suggest that the link between women’s rights and human capital is equally relevant today as it was in the nineteenth century: Figure 2 shows that in the cross section of rich and poor countries in the year 2000, gender inequality correlates with education even more closely than with income levels.

Figure 2. GID Index versus average years of schooling, 2000

Source of schooling data: World Development Indicators, print edition 2003. Figure excludes major oil producers.

Governments can further the cause of women’s rights by focusing on policies that increase families’ incentives to educate their children. Examples of such policies include public health programs for children, high-quality public education, and subsidies for families who keep their children in school. These policies can change men’s attitudes toward female empowerment, helping to create a broader coalition in favour of expanding women’s rights.

References

Chused, Richard H. 1985. “Late Nineteenth Century Married Women’s Property Law: Reception of the Early Married Women’s Property Acts by Courts and Legislatures.” American Journal of Legal History 29(1): 3-35.
Doepke, Matthias and Michéle Tertilt. 2008. “Women’s Liberation: What’s in It for Men?” CEPR Discussion Paper 6771.
Duflo, Esther. 2005. “Gender Equality in Development.” BREAD Policy Paper 11.
Washington, Ebonya. 2008. “Female Socialization: How Daughters Affect Their Legislator Fathers’ Voting on Women’s Issues.” American Economic Review. 98(1), 311-32.

Footnotes

1 Universal female suffrage was introduced in 1918 in Britain and in 1920 in the United States.
2 See Duflo 2005.
3 The Times, April 23, 1868, p. 8.
4 Chused 1985, p. 18.
5 The importance of daughters in influencing their fathers’ political views has also been documented in other contexts, such as the voting records of today’s legislators in the United Kingdom and the United States (see Washington 2008).

Comments

[robertdfeinman]

I guess suffragettes going to jail and having to be force fed while on hunger strikes didn't have anything to do with it.

I'm a big fan of finding economic arguments behind political change (or lack of), but there is a limit to how far you can stretch this. Civil unrest is a powerful tool for change. The civil rights movement of the 1960's was also based upon overt opposition to the status quo. Sometimes it is just worth it to grant rights than to have to deal with social discord and the possibility it may morph into something worse.

The fact that educated and more liberated women have an economic benefit on a society is well-known. It not only increases the number of people that can generate income, but increases the number of consumers, and lowers the birth rate.

The same thing is true for democracies compared with autocracies, nevertheless the dictatorships and plutocracies continue and their countries suffer. Just look at Burma, Zimbabwe, or Haiti. The difference is that it takes a real revolution to get rid of a dictatorship, while a partial democracy, as in the UK and US, can grant rights to women (and minorities) without threatening the ruling elite.

Perhaps before engaging in such studies economists should just float their premises past some sociologists or historians and see if they pass the laugh test. They might save themselves some embarrassment this way.

[Steve Phelan]

The authors argue that "...women tend to attach more weight to the well-being of children than men" then spend the rest of the paper describing how men care about their daughters' level of human capital.

How about "as the private and social returns to investment in female human capital increased, attitudes towards developing female human capital changed"

Virtually the same argument can be made without assuming that mothers have greater insights into (or compassion for) their children's needs (thus avoiding the implicit gender bias of such a statement and championing gender equality).

[dale]

modern economic development is one part of a broader process that displace traditional cultures. Habermas suggested that cultural "rationalization" may even be the primary process that lays the groundwork for economic rationalization. Which suggests that our globalization regimes might encourage the vary sorts of "enlightenment" thinking critical of established orders at the same time as they encourage appropriate sorts of economic rationalization.

I also find it helpful to look at women's rights, etc. through the lens of "the struggle for recognition" (as Robert suggests above). This adds a further moral-political dimension to the one-sided economic determinism we see too often. (Though I do believe that healthy doses of economic determinism are also important.)

[Haris]

robertdfeinman

You seem to be missing or ignoring the point. Women pushed for the vote, true, but many rights were granted to them before they had the vote [and, presumably, value to the politicians]. What's more interesting is why the movement happened. I agree that civil unrest is a powerful tool for social change, but there have been hundreds, perhaps thousands of years of the patriarchy, and women waited until 1875 to start seriously contesting male dominance? A paper like this analyzes why such a movement was possible then, why it was desirable, and why it succeeded. I doubt any serious scientist would laugh at this.

[Anonymous]

What got my goat was this: "As Figure 1 shows, today most rich countries are close to the ideal of gender equality, while in the poorest countries women have only limited rights and face widespread discrimination."

The authors are apparently unaware that in many developing countries there is reason to believe that it was the spread of Western culture through colonization that reduced women to a low legal status. I'd like to see some evidence that women's natural state is low status in economies prior to development. (Details please, not what is likely to be a very Eurocentric index.)

The attempt to find a unifying theory of women's rights may be an amusing intellectual exercise for the authors, but research is usually best pursued by starting with a broad and deep understanding of the facts for a specific country and from these facts drawing a theory. I suspect that the current authors started with a theory that has the good fortune to match quite a few facts.

[mikx]

The authors are apparently unaware that in many developing countries there is reason to believe that it was the spread of Western culture through colonization that reduced women to a low legal status.

How about backing up your off-the-wall assertion with some checkable facts and references?

What countries, what aspects of Western culture made locals even more backward?

[cm]

Not to diminish the achievements of Women's Rights activists, but it seems to me a large contributor to facilitating equal opportunity (not just for women) is the recognition that a previous marginalized group is needed, or just useful, to sustain and/or develop the prevailing, or new, economic/social paradigm.

As in backfilling men's jobs during times of war (men drafted to combat), taking men's positions after war casualties or when the men are away in POW camps (if it so happens your nation lost the war), or to supply labor for industry and supporting business in times of rapid economic growth.

Even so, equal opportunity, as opposed to just being used, still has to be fought for and defended.

[anne]

Men are more wonderful than wonderful. Men are more wonderful than wonderful. Men are more wonderful than wonderful. Men are more wonderful than wonderful. Men are more wonderful than wonderful. Proven by economists....

[anne]

''She was in bed, a book propped in her lap -- a biography of a French feminist, which she was reading for the hairdo information.''

-- Lorrie Moore

[david]

I keep thinking, maybe economists aren't caricatures of themselves.

Then they say "Rather, it was driven by old-fashioned self-interest deriving from men’s concern about their daughters’ welfare and their descendants’ education."

So, I blame them. Whenever I get a "but economists know this already" I'm going to say this like a prayer for restraint.

[reason]

I find the story interesting but unconvincing. Surely, he should have noticed that earlier there were peasants rights, then rights for the landless, then rights for children, then rights for animals etc, etc. Perhaps social conscience is a luxury good. Perhaps it becomes harder for the well off, to keep fighting to maintain their privilege, or they just become more vulnerable to reasoned argument rather than raw power.

[reason]

And of course, I forgot the liberation of slaves.

[swells]

The main thing that is "in it for males" in respect to equality for women is just this: It behooves everyone to treat other human beings as means to their own ends instead of treating them as simply means to one's own ends.

It's not very complicated.

[reason]

David Brin tells a story about how relative affluence expands our circle of empathy. The news that dolphins are stranded on the beach would have both modern westerners and their hunter gatherer forefathers running to the spot. But for very different reasons.

[david]

"David Brin tells a story about how relative affluence expands our circle of empathy."

It's not at all clear that it's affluence that did the trick alone, or even did the trick at all, though I'm a multi-causal kind of person so I think it's got its place.

[Noni Mausa]

Two points not addressed, from an XX point of view:

-- No-one asked why it's the case that the default rights and self-direction of women in society except in some of the poorest societies, and in the most prosperous, seems to be "damn little". I tie this to several inter-related factors: women are smaller and weaker, men are more willing to use violence in controlling them, men can force women to bear children, and the children, whether intentionally or forcibly engendered, effectively become hostages to this or another man's household due to, yes, the womens bond to the children and often to the husband.

Not all men, by any means. Not even often. But the pattern is there, and the physical threat, if not on the table, is generally always in the cupboard somewhere.

Increasing the number of adults in the household while only one of them makes the decisions, effectively multiplies his personal power, his breeding success, and his status. In a society where men actively compete for status and violence is a common possibility, having the possession of one or more wives can be the difference between prosperity or weakness -- even life or death.

In a more prosperous community, with little or no violence and either fewer status concerns or enough anonymity so that status is established in other ways, the marginal value of "captive" women to men drops. They begin to be more trouble than they are worth, and except for bearing and raising children, their worth is easily replaced by other arrangements.

This is all present in the societal subconscious, seldom spoken of baldly. Being unacknowledged, these patterns are explained away by other, generally somewhat valid rationales. Men and women meet and love. But why do you suppose a male partner whose wife is leaving him so often responds with murder and or suicide? Some part of him sees the loss as a life threatening one.

Layered on top of this lizard-brain need to "have" a woman, possess her, in order to extend the male's power and prestige, are the conscious and loving mental and spiritual abilities we all claim to admire. They are real and noble, but privation and fear and competition still sideline the virtue and intelligence of most human beings.

Shorter post: prosperity causes the liberated rights of women, children and slaves, poverty prevents it. Or so it seems to me.

Noni

[Anonymous]

mikx:

Traditional Asian culture: Dad makes the money and hands it over to Mom who decides how to spend it. Standard theme in Asian literature: Son has so much respect for mother whom he allows her to run his life -- even to the degree of allowing her to destroy his marriage.

Some African cultures: Absolute unqualified respect for elders -- even if only elder by an hour. This respect and duty to serve is not in any way gender specific. African culture in particular was devastated by the introduction and enforcement of Western concepts of law.

The Asian comments are general knowledge. (See newspaper articles on Japan. Lu Xun's an example of Chinese author.)

Don't know of any good references on Africa in English. Amadou Hampate Ba is excellent if you read French. There's an interesting history of Africa published in the sixties in French by Samir Amin -- should be available in university libraries.

In any case, you don't need me to tell you that the status of women is a very complex issue worldwide.

[Dirk van Dijk]

"Men and women meet and love. But why do you suppose a male partner whose wife is leaving him so often responds with murder and or suicide? Some part of him sees the loss as a life threatening one."
Noni Mausa

Perhaps it is because the scales have tipped well beyond equal protection under the law, to a situation where women are overwhelmingly favored in divorce situation. The loss of the marriage means the effective loss of the children as well as the spouse for the man, all he gets to keep are the debts and the ongoing monthly bill. What does the woman lose in a divorce by comparision? Perhaps thats why 2/3 of all divorce actions are filed by the wife. Divorce attorneys will routinely suggest to a wife that she trup up domestic volence charges against the man to get a better bargaining position, and there is no downside to it to the woman. In many juristictions there is a manditory arrest policy on all domestic violence situations, and it is almost never the woman who is lead away in handcuffs.

[Eric Dewey]

Microlending is becoming an increasingly important tool to foster economic development, all over the world (including the USA).

Most microloans are given to women, apparently because they are better credit risks than men (not a surprise to the US banking system, which has the data to support this, but are prohibited by law from considering gender in making credit decisions).

Agriculture may have been originated by women. I'd say that was pretty important to the development of economic systems.

There are only two explanations that I find remotely plausible to explain why women do not rule the world economically:

1) Noni Mausa's point above about the ongoing threat of violence, combined with
2) the apparent willingness of women generally to sacrifice their own interests in order to reach some long-term goal (perhaps associated with reproduction)

In other words, women seem to be making a long-term economic decision to sacrifice their own right to rule, whether because of physical coercion or for some other reason (an innate understanding of the overriding importance of social relationships?).

(Speaking entirely in generalities here - a plethora of exceptions exist to prove the rule...)

The question why women seem to do this is less interesting than the question why men do not?

Are men biologically anti-social creatures? All the empirical evidence seem to confirm that fact.

Is anti-social behavior required of a ruler?

That certainly appears to be the case...

[Noni Mausa]

Noni Mausa: "Some part of him sees the loss as a life threatening one."

Dirk van Dijk: "Perhaps it is because the scales have tipped well beyond equal protection under the law, to a situation where women are overwhelmingly favored in divorce situation."

Dirk, I have seen this in action and I can sympathize, but male killing of his estranged wife is a common event in most of the cultures I know of, whatever situation the law presents.

May I mention the default result of divorce before the 60s, was very often the woman's loss of home, support and the regard of the community, which situation the post war laws were developed and put in place to prevent or mitigate?

The key phrase here, which goes without comment so often, is this: "...granting rights to women..." The obvious correlate of this phrase is that those rights are bestowed by persons capable of withdrawing them, often by force since intelligent persons about to lose their rights are unlikely to take it quietly.

Eric said: "...women seem to be making a long-term economic decision to sacrifice their own right to rule, whether because of physical coercion or for some other reason (an innate understanding of the overriding importance of social relationships?)..."

Usually they believe the second reason is the real one, and thus never get to testing the first reason. I have seen many, many women stay with an abusive, profligate or dependent partner because they know if they leave, some disaster will follow; they know their partner well enough to know that in her absence, he will not feed the kids, pay the bills, or avoid setting fire to the house. The situation can slowly progress to a point where every day is a danger to the woman and a game of dodging the risks her useless mate presents to the home and family.

Among my closest friends are men who are the exact opposite, loyal and hardworking and modest and kindly. How do we breed more of them? Or, how do we prevent our daughters perpetuating the the other sort?

Noni
now she's really in a mood

[Patricia Shannon]

I read that one of the American Indian tribes (Apache, I think) only went to war after it was approved by the women.

[Mjaybee]

Noni Mausa:

Women in the US seem to get very light sentences when they kill their husbands, certainly lighter than anything men would get for comparable crimes. The "domestic abuse" defense now apparently carries weight if a women is coerced into wearing high heels to bed (Mary Winkler). Likewise, women can kill their children with impunity when it comes to legal penalties. There would be no "post-partum depression" defenxse for a man who hunted down and killed five children in his house, would there.

Ultimately, we can see decline of birthrates and increased juvenile crime in the US to match trends in the UK, where this social experiment has all but eliminated the traditional family from British society. Well done.