We investigate the legacy of the former Papal States on modern female condition by comparing Italian municipalities located in a narrow band across the border between the former Papal States and the former Grand Duchy of Tuscany. While in the Papal States gender inequality was particularly severe, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany experienced a relatively stronger female emancipation. We find that one century after the fall of the Papal States, in the municipalities formerly ruled by the Pope, there is lower female labour market participation and employment when compared to their counterparts in Tuscany, while we do not detect any discontinuity for males. We also find that in the former Papal States there is less political support for the legal right to divorce, historically advocated by women emancipation movements.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.