The Role of Economic Complexity on the Formation of Gender Roles

“He is a gentleman, and I am a gentleman's daughter. So far we are equal†, Pride and Prejudice, 1813. Imagine if the Internet existed in 1813 when Jane Austen wrote the book. Would gender norms be comparable to the current ones? Boserup (1970) presented the novel thesis that cultural norms that assign different roles to men and women originate from the use of primitive agricultural technologies and evolve over time. Is such a mechanism still at play or was it a mechanism that worked only during the Malthusian era? Does the knowledge accumulation part of economic growth affect attitudes towards women? We examine this hypothesis relating revealed attitudes of up to 64,954 individuals coming from 59 countries with the level of their country's economic complexity. Our findings suggest the presence of U-shaped relationship between gender attitudes and economic complexity. At low levels of economic complexity, there is a negative relationship between female emancipation and the level of sophistication, suggesting that early stages of technological development are back-lashing gender roles. Beyond a threshold level of economic complexity this relationship is reversed, thus suggesting that further knowledge accumulation favours more egalitarian attitudes. Overall, our findings suggest that knowledge, encapsulated into technological advancement and the production of sophisticated goods, ultimately triggers a positive effect on female emancipation. Interestingly, we find that this mechanism applies primarily to attitudes related to the position of women within the households. When it concerns the change of attitudes related to the public position of women, this effect takes place only when the level of economic development is sufficiently high.