Working to protect rights: Women's civil liberties in cross-cultural perspective

Using data for a majority of the world's countries over a 25- to 55-year period, this paper analyzes cross-cultural heterogeneity in women's civil liberties independently of and relative to men. Civil liberties include the freedoms of discussion and movement, freedom from forced labor, property rights, and access to justice. Regression analyses show that women's civil liberties vary considerably across cultural zones defined by the intersection of religious traditions and geographical regions. These patterns persist even when controlling for factors such as democracy and development. Accounting for women's political representation and educational attainment often reduces but never eliminates these cross-cultural differences; the same is true for embeddedness in world society. In contrast, women's labor force participation all but erases negative cultural effects, and instrumental-variables analyses suggest that this factor is a causal determinant of women's civil liberties. Efforts to improve women's rights should therefore focus on overcoming cultural barriers to their workforce participation.