The World Bank is campaigning to end sexist laws.
Will this promote gender equality?
I’m sceptical.
In places where labour markets are informal, state capacity is weak, and women are dependent on patriarchs, legal reforms seem futile.
Progressive laws may trigger cultural backlash.
Brian Wheaton finds that when US states passed the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) - guaranteeing equal rights - men became more sexist.
After a state passed an ERA, the share of men expressing support for gender equality dropped by 15 percentage points. This effect persists over decades.
Voters also swing right, favouring Republicans.
ERA passage also heightened men’s dislike of women’s liberation activists.
On the other hand, perhaps backlash is actually triggered by feminist campaigning?
To test this alternative hypothesis, Wheaton examines what happens when a state ERA reaches the ballot but is not passed. Nothing happens. Backlash is only triggered by the law. This holds regardless of income and trust in government.
ALL the following laws have induced backlash:
Civil Rights Acts
Abortion legalisation
Gun control relaxation
Defence of Marriage Acts
Marijuana legalisation
Gay Marriage legalisation.
Wheaton’s findings echo Christopher Claassen’s excellent APSR paper: increased civil and political rights for marginalised groups weakened support for democracy.
Why do legal rights trigger backlash?
I suggest we understand the social psychology of status.
High-status groups resent low-status groups’ demands for equal status.
If one group believes that they are entitled to greater respect and authority, they tend to resent low-status groups who claim equal treatment. This is unwarranted! Attempts to usurp control by harnessing state machinery then trigger hostility. They’re getting something for nothing, beyond their station.
How do status beliefs actually change?
My research on the global history of gender points to four key drivers:
Job-creating economic growth. If women surge into the labour market and demonstrate competence in socially valued domains, while others publicly affirm gender equality, then people come to expect equal treatment.
Universities can create opportunities for young people to mix and mingle, engage with egalitarianism, exercise independence, and question earlier bias.
Reverse dominance coalitions are equally important: calling out unfairness, enabling people to rethink bias, and secure better treatment. Democratisation and free media aid the spread of feminist consciousness.
Television (iff progressive) can foster liberalism and empathy.
Thanks to these structural shifts, Americans have become more gender equal.
(Despite the cultural backlash created by laws).
Caution
What about countries that lack major engines of gender equality?
The World Bank is pushing to overturn sexist laws in countries that are poorer, possibly with more ‘zero-sum mentalities’, less exposure to women demonstrating equal competence, and less feminist consciousness.
If men are trapped in precarity, unable to get ahead, repeatedly rebuffed and disrespected, then they may be especially irked to see their government increasing protections for low-status women.
Charismatic politicians (like Yoon Suk Yeol in South Korea or Law & Justice in Poland) could also spread myths that laws provide substantive benefits: favouring women.
If the World Bank is to make budgetary support contingent on egalitarian legal reforms, it might replicate Wheaton’s methods.
More importantly, I think it’s important to recognise that even if something sounds progressive, we should not assume so til we’ve checked the evidence :-)
How would you compare that ad you posted from the 70s to the recent commercial success of 50 Shades of Gray? i.e. I suspect both the purchaser of the advertised product would likely have been female as was the case with 50 Shades of Gray.
Regarding the backlash -
Does it mean it's temporary, like a first, short-term kinda knee-jerk reaction from those who benefit the most from the status quo, but it then, on a longer-term scale, changes and more progressive views prevail even among those who had the initial backlash?
Or should it be read as society becomes more heavily split in two different groups: the mainstream that is now more progressive and equalitarian, and a more "traditionalist" group?
(I'm thinking this second scenario could help explain the emergence of extreme-right parties in Western politics - inequality, lack economic growth for some sectors, lack of oportunities, but also people feeling threatened by women's rights?)
Thanks!