Gender discrimination has been pointed out as a determining factor behind the long-run divergence in incomes of Southern vis-à-vis Northwestern Europe. In this paper, we show that women in Portugal were not historically more discriminated against than those in other parts of Western Europe, including England and the Netherlands. We rely on a new dataset of thousands of observations from archival sources covering six centuries, and we complement it with a qualitative discussion of comparative social norms. Compared with Northwestern Europe, women in Portugal faced similar gender wage gaps, married at similar ages, and did not face more restrictions on labor market participation. Consequently, other factors must have been responsible for the Little Divergence of Western European incomes.

性别歧视已被指出是南欧与西北欧收入长期差异背后的决定性因素。在这篇论文中，我们表明，葡萄牙的女性在历史上并没有比西欧其他地区（包括英格兰和荷兰）的女性受到更多的歧视。我们依赖于一个新的数据集，该数据集包含来自六个世纪的档案来源的数千个观察结果，并且我们通过对比较社会规范的定性讨论来补充它。与西北欧相比，葡萄牙女性面临着相似的性别工资差距、相似的结婚年龄，并且没有面临更多的劳动力市场参与限制。因此，其他因素一定是造成西欧收入差异不大的原因。