Revisiting the Ancient Origins of Gender Inequality

This study re-examines the long-term effects of traditional plough use on contemporary gender roles, as originally advanced by Alesina, Giuliano and Nunn [Quarterly Journal of Economics (2013) Vol. 128, pp. 469 – 530]. The findings demonstrate that the reduced-form relationship between historical plough adoption and female empowerment is robust to implementing a falsification test, using alternative proxies for gender roles, and accounting for potential selection bias from unobservables and spatial dependence. Additional evidence indicates that ancestral plough adoption reinforced the persistence of gender-biased norms, reflected in oral traditions, that continue to shape present-day inequality. However, the intergenerational transmission of these norms is substantially weaker in societies whose ancestors were exposed to unstable climatic environments between 500 and 1900 CE, suggesting that ancestral instability constrained the cultural persistence of plough-induced gender roles.