“Bringing the State Back In”: Explaining Women’s Economic Empowerment in an Era of Globalization
| Date | 01 November 2018 |
| Published date | 01 November 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321717736743 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321717736743
Political Studies
2018, Vol. 66(4) 1043 –1066
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321717736743
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“Bringing the State Back In”:
Explaining Women’s
Economic Empowerment
in an Era of Globalization
Zhiyuan Wang
Abstract
The extant literature views the decision to protect women’s economic rights as made by firms and
neglects the role of the state. This study argues that states are pressured to improve the protection
of these rights by enacting gender parity–promoting policies in response to similar policy choices by
their economic competitors, resulting in a specific type of policy interdependence—the upward policy
convergence. Additionally, this convergence should be stronger in laws than in practices because
some states continue to benefit from women-suppressing policies, and because improving laws is less
costly than improving policy implementation. Using newly coded global data from 1999 to 2009 on
women’s economic rights that distinguish between laws and practices, spatial econometrical analyses
support these conjectures. Essentially, this study shows that the race to the bottom is not the sole
consequence of globalization, a climb to the top is possible as well when we look closer and more
carefully. In other words, trade and capital dependence can generate positive policy gains too.
Keywords
women’s economic rights, globalization, policy interdependence, spatial econometrics
Accepted: 22 September 2017
Introduction
According to the International Labour Organization, equality in employment between
men and women is a basic labor right and a fundamental human right. Women work in all
countries, but in many countries, they are not treated equally in terms of hiring, pay, pro-
motion, or benefits. What explains this discrepancy? How can this discrepancy be
changed, and why does it change? These are the research questions that motivate current
studies on women’s economic rights.
The extant literature is inclined to view changes in women’s economic rights as a pro-
cess in which economic forces dominate. Globalization has thus received a great deal of
scholarly attention (e.g. Blanton and Blanton, 2015; Cho, 2013; Potrafke, 2015; Richards
Department of Political Science, Texas A&M University–Commerce, Commerce, TX, USA
Corresponding author:
Zhiyuan Wang, Department of Political Science, Texas A&M University–Commerce, P.O. Box 3011,
Commerce, TX 75429, USA.
Email: Zhiyuan.Wang@tamuc.edu
736743PSX0010.1177/0032321717736743Political StudiesWang
research-article2017
Article
1044 Political Studies 66(4)
and Gelleny, 2007). In the literature, women’s economic rights are treated exclusively as
the outcome of interactions between female workers and firms involved in global eco-
nomic transactions. The role of state is largely and unfairly neglected.
While some researchers note the role of the state, they often suggest an indirect rela-
tionship between the improvement of women’s status and the state’s efforts: economic
development increases state revenue and therefore facilitates governmental spending on
programs that benefit women (Acker, 2004; Gray et al., 2006; Munshi and Rosenzweig,
2006; Poe et al., 1997). More recent studies have placed greater emphasis on gender-
parity-promoting policies as a significant factor that affects women’s economic status,
whether in terms of the enactment (Berik, 2011; Cole, 2013a; Duflo, 2012) or diffusion
(Neumayer and de Soysa, 2011) of such policies, but the critical role of the state in shap-
ing women’s economic rights has not been well recognized and has thus been underex-
plored. The state is not neutral and cannot be safely assumed away in the relationship
between globalization and changes in women’s economic status. States can alter laws and
determine their implementation, both of which substantially influence women’s eco-
nomic status. More importantly, in an era of globalization, internationalized economic
competition externalizes the impact of states’ domestic policy decisions and therefore
makes policies across states more interdependent. This interdependence is the key to
understanding the global changes in women’s economic status.
In this study, I argue that changes in women’s economic rights result from states’ inter-
action with each other in terms of promoting gender equality in employment. As globali-
zation intensifies, states are also tightly woven into international competition for capital
and markets (both overseas and domestic). The improvement of women’s economic
rights expands the labor supply, increases the quality of human capital, and enhances
productivity, and it thus contributes to the attractiveness of a state as a potential invest-
ment host and the competitiveness of its products. This improvement is likely to generate
negative policy externalities for economically competing states that do not follow suit,
and therefore pressures these “peers” to make similar policy moves, leading to upward
policy convergence or a climb to the top. As a result, we expect to observe a worldwide
enhancement in women’s economic rights over time—the diffusion of higher standards of
women’s economic rights across the globe. However, this enhancement should be more
pronounced in laws than in practices because some states continue to benefit from the
practical subjugation of women, and because it is less costly to make legislative changes
than to improve policy implementation. Specifying a spatial econometric model, I ana-
lyze newly coded data on women’s economic rights that distinguish laws from practices
and find evidence in support of these conjectures.
This study contributes to the literature on several fronts. First, it further clarifies and
stresses the role of the state in shaping women’s economic status by examining the rela-
tionship via the lens of policy interdependence. Second, it employs new data that allow
for a more nuanced investigation of the dynamics of women’s economic rights by separat-
ing laws from practices. Such scrutiny is proved to be both theoretically imperative and
empirically fruitful. Third, more broadly and importantly, it shows that trade and capital
dependence does constrain states’ behavior, but can do so in a positive way.
The remainder of the study is organized as follows. The next section critically reviews
the literature. After that, I explain why improvement in women’s economic rights is eco-
nomically beneficial and how such benefits might induce pertinent policy changes among
economically competing states. I also consider how these policy changes differ in terms
of laws and practices. Following that is the research design, which provides details on
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