Jha Chandan Kumar, Sarangi Sudipta
Madden College of Business & Economics, Le Moyne College, Syracuse, New York, United States of America.
Deptartment of Economics, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2025 Aug 4;20(8):e0328083. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0328083. eCollection 2025.
We contribute to the understanding of mechanisms underlying deep-rooted gender norms by exploring the link between the historical availability of arable land and contemporary gender outcomes. We argue that an abundance of arable land in historical times, i.e., pre-industrial period, required more workers in the fields resulting in norms where women worked and contributed from outside the home as well. Consequently, these societies emphasized women's health due to its positive effect on their productivity in the fields. Moreover, this economic contribution provided women greater bargaining power in the allocation of intrahousehold resources. The historical avail- ability of arable land for a nation is measured as the weighted mean of the shares of its constituent ethnic groups' ancestral lands suited to cereal agriculture. Consistent with these arguments, we show that countries with more ancestral arable land have higher female labor force participation rates and better health outcomes, measured by maternal mortality ratio and female-male life expectancy gap. We then illustrate the 'persistence of norm' mechanism, by showing that ancestral arable land measured at the district level is positively associated with individual-level attitudes regarding women's participation in the labor market.
我们通过探索历史上可耕地的可获得性与当代性别结果之间的联系，来促进对根深蒂固的性别规范背后机制的理解。我们认为，在历史时期，即前工业化时期，大量的可耕地需要更多的田间劳动力，从而形成了女性也在家庭之外工作并做出贡献的规范。因此，这些社会强调女性的健康，因为这对她们在田间的生产力有积极影响。此外，这种经济贡献赋予了女性在家庭内部资源分配中更大的议价能力。一个国家历史上可耕地的可获得性是以其组成民族的祖传土地中适合谷物种植的土地份额的加权平均值来衡量的。与这些观点一致，我们表明，拥有更多祖传可耕地的国家，其女性劳动力参与率更高，健康结果更好，这以孕产妇死亡率和男女预期寿命差距来衡量。然后，我们通过表明在地区层面衡量的祖传可耕地与个人层面关于女性参与劳动力市场的态度呈正相关，来说明“规范的持续性”机制。
