IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp17857.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Protection for Whom? The Political Economy of Protective Labor Laws for Women

Author

Listed:
  • Doepke, Matthias

    (London School of Economics)

  • Foerster, Hanno

    (Boston College)

  • Hannusch, Anne

    (University of Bonn)

  • Tertilt, Michèle

    (University of Mannheim)

Abstract

During the first half of the twentieth century, many US states enacted laws restricting women's labor market opportunities, including maximum hours restrictions, minimum wage laws, and night-shift bans. The era of so-called protective labor laws came to an end in the 1960s as a result of civil rights reforms. In this paper, we investigate the political economy behind the rise and fall of these laws. We argue that the main driver behind protective labor laws was men's desire to shield themselves from labor market competition. We spell out the mechanism through a politico-economic model in which singles and couples work in different sectors and vote on protective legislation. Restrictions are supported by single men and couples with male sole earners who compete with women for jobs. We show that the theory's predictions for when protective legislation will be introduced are well supported by US state-level evidence.

Suggested Citation

  • Doepke, Matthias & Foerster, Hanno & Hannusch, Anne & Tertilt, Michèle, 2025. "Protection for Whom? The Political Economy of Protective Labor Laws for Women," IZA Discussion Papers 17857, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
  • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17857
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp17857.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Claudia Goldin, 1988. "Marriage Bars: Discrimination Against Married Women Workers, 1920's to 1950's," NBER Working Papers 2747, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2023. "Scientific Background to the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2023," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2023-2, Nobel Prize Committee.
    2. Ma. Christina Epetia, 2024. "Claudia Goldin and the economics of women and work," Philippine Review of Economics, University of the Philippines School of Economics and Philippine Economic Society, vol. 61(1), pages 71-86, June.
    3. Tito Boeri & Jan van Ours, 2013. "The Economics of Imperfect Labor Markets: Second Edition," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10142.
    4. Heather Sarsons, 2024. "How the other half works: Claudia Goldin's contributions to our understanding of women's labour market outcomes," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 126(3), pages 419-439, July.
    5. Ana María Iregui-Bohórquez & María Teresa Ramírez-Giraldo & Sara Isabel Caicedo-Silva, 2024. "Las mujeres en la banca central: El caso del Banco de la República de Colombia, 1923-2023," Cuadernos de Historia Económica 62, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    6. Baum, Tom, 2012. "Working the skies: Changing representations of gendered work in the airline industry, 1930–2011," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 33(5), pages 1185-1194.
    7. Juliana Jaramillo-Echeverri, 2023. "La transición de la fecundidad en Colombia: nueva evidencia regional," Cuadernos de Historia Económica 60, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    8. Heather Boushey, 2013. "The role of the government in work–family conflict in the US," Chapters, in: Deborah M. Figart & Tonia L. Warnecke (ed.), Handbook of Research on Gender and Economic Life, chapter 19, pages 307-322, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. Nayoung Rim, 2021. "The Effect of Title IX on Gender Disparity in Graduate Education," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(2), pages 521-552, March.
    10. Ana María Iregui-Bohórquez & Ligia Alba Melo-Becerra & María Teresa Ramírez-Giraldo & Ana María Tribín-Uribe, 2020. "The path to gender equality in Colombia: Are we there yet?," Borradores de Economia 1131, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    11. Nayoung Rim, 2017. "The Effect of Title IX on Gender Disparity in Graduate Education," Departmental Working Papers 58, United States Naval Academy Department of Economics.
    12. Leonora Risse, 2022. "Career and Family: Women's Century‐Long Journey toward Equity," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 98(323), pages 411-415, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    structural transformation; labor market competition; women's rights; political economy; protective legislation; family economics; gender;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D13 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Production and Intrahouse Allocation
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D78 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • N30 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - General, International, or Comparative
    • O10 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General
    • O43 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Institutions and Growth

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17857. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.