Kiel Working Papers, Kiel Institute for World Economics
No 1625:
Men, Women, and the Ballot. Gender Imbalances and Suffrage Extensions in US States
Sebastian Braun and Michael Kvasnicka
Abstract: Woman suffrage led to one of the greatest enfranchisements
in history. Yet, women neither won the right to vote by force, nor did men
grant it under the imminent threat of female unrest. These facts are
difficult to reconcile with leading political economy theories of suffrage
extensions. In this paper, we study suffrage extensions at the level of US
states and territories in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to learn
about the factors that accelerated, respectively delayed, a jurisdiction's
transition to woman suffrage. Our results show that the general scarcity of
women in the American West, or a high sex ratio, was the single most
important factor behind the region's lead in the enfranchisement of women
in the US. High ratios of grantors (men) to grantees (women) of the
franchise appear to have promoted earlier suffrage extensions, as these
imbalances reduced the political costs and risks for male legislators and
electorates. Our finding may provide a more general insight into the
economics of voluntary power sharing. All else equal, smaller groups should
find it much easier to acquire rights or to get admitted to economic and
political clubs
Keywords: Woman Suffrage; Democratization; Political Economy; Power Sharing; Sex Ratio; (follow links to similar papers)
JEL-Codes: D72,; J16,; K10,; N41,; N42; (follow links to similar papers)
40 pages, May 2010
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