Breadwinner Backlash: The Gendered Effects of Industrial Decline

• In Event: New Frontiers in Gender and Political Economy

Abstract

Industries with skewed gender makeups are vulnerable to globalization, decarbonization, and other drivers of economic disruption. We study how decline in disproportionately male industries, such as coal and steel, affects political mobilization. We theorize that an uneven loss of male jobs, and a shift in income from husbands to wives, can foment “nostalgic” political coalitions that seek a return of patriarchal divisions of labor between women and men. Such attitudes fuel right-wing populist movements that claim to protect traditional domestic structures. This theory is supported using fine-grained data on local labor markets, domestic relationships, political attitudes, and electoral outcomes in the United States over the last two decades. This paper offers a new gender-based account of the “globalization backlash” and shows how within-household status concerns moderate responses to economic dislocation.

Authors

• Richard Clark, University of Notre Dame

• Noah Zucker, Princeton University