Persistence of Gender Equality: Evidence from Skeletal Records

• In Event: Historical Legacies: Tracing the Origins of Political Behavior

Abstract

The absence of historical measures of gender equality poses a significant challenge for scholars who study the origins and persistence of gender equal attitudes across several centuries. This paper seeks to overcome this challenge by leveraging on skeletal data from 103 archaeological sites in Europe. Following Buckwalter and Baten (2019), we construct a site-level indicator of gender equality based on the relative frequency of a biological marker found on teeth. This allows us to measure historical differences in nutritional and health outcomes between men and women that date back to more than a millennium ago. We find that skeletal measures of gender bias significantly predict contemporary gender attitudes and political outcomes even after holding agricultural practices, religion, and other institutional features constant. Our results highlight the resilience of gender unequal norms in modern societies and suggest the importance of other non-institutional factors in perpetuating the longevity of such beliefs.

Authors

• Taylor Jane Damann, Washington University in St. Louis

• Jeremy Siow, University of Oxford

• Margit Tavits, Washington University in St. Louis