Resource Wealth and Women’s Economic and Political Power in the U.S. States

Abstract

Ross argues that oil wealth reduces women’s economic and political power, but critics maintain that accounting for a community’s attitudes toward gender equality makes the gendered resource curse disappear. This article disentangles the two perspectives by studying the effects of resource wealth on women’s economic and political status in the U.S. states, where resource wealth varies significantly while cultural differences are comparatively small. Data between 1997 and 2012 reveal evidence of a gendered resource curse, consistent with Ross. I also update the theory of the gendered resource curse by showing, via a culture-augmented labor–leisure model of workforce participation, that far from being irrelevant when accounting for varying attitudes toward gender roles, resource wealth and those patriarchal attitudes combine to suppress even more women’s economic and political influence. Data from the U.S. states support this expectation as well.