Historical gender discrimination does not explain comparative Western European development: evidence from Portugal, 1300-1900

doi:10.1016/j.eeh.2022.101481

Explorations in Economic History

Volume 88, April 2023, 101481

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eeh.2022.101481 Get rights and content

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Abstract

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.

Keywords

Historical gender discrimination

Gender wage gap

Culture

Social norms

Comparative development

The Little Divergence

European Marriage Pattern

JEL codes

N13

N33

J16

Cited by (0)

: An earlier version of this paper circulated as "Portugal's rise and fall, 1300–1900: a new analysis using occupational and women's data." We thank the members of the "Prices, Wages and Rents in Portugal 1300–1910" project for making this work possible. The editor Marianne H. Wanamaker and two referees provided useful feedback which helped improve the paper. Hélder Carvalhal, Francesco Fiore Melacrinis, Ulrich Pfister, Sandra de Pleijt, Cristina Radu, and Jacob Weisdorf kindly shared data. Carlos Faísca and João Pontes provided access to some primary sources. We are grateful for discussions with all of the above and Victoria Bateman, Mauricio Drelichman, Alice Evans, Rui Faria, António Henriques, Jane Humphries, Oded Galor, Cormac Ó Gráda, Pedro S. Martins, Mauro Rota, Leigh Shaw-Taylor, Xuesheng You and Jan Luiten van Zanden, as well as conference and seminar participants. Joakim Book and Joana Paulino provided research assistance. The authors acknowledge financial support from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (CEECIND/04,197/2017) and from GHES/CSG-ISEG – Lisbon School of Economics & Management, Universidade de Lisboa (UIDB/04,521/2020). The dataset we use in this paper is available online (Palma et al. 2022).