Demand and Fear: When do female emancipation shocks persist?

Sudden expansions of women’s economic or political opportunity sometimes produce durable shifts in gender norms and sometimes provoke backlash that undoes the gains within a generation. Demand and Fear asks which conditions tip the outcome in which direction, with attention to how male incentive structures — labor-market position, marriage-market signaling, perceived status — interact with the magnitude and visibility of the emancipation shock. The paper develops the argument empirically using settings in which the size and timing of the shock can be cleanly identified.