We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
The puzzle of heterogeneity in support for free trade.
- Authors
Drope, Jeffrey; Chowdhury, Abdur
- Abstract
Over time and across countries, researchers have noted frequent and mostly unexplained gender differences in the levels of support for policies of free or freer trade: according to aggregate results from many surveys, women tend to be less favorable toward policies of liberalizing trade than men. Positing an economic security explanation based largely on a mobile factors approach, we ask if it is women generally who are more negative toward trade or rather women who are more economically vulnerable - i.e., women from the scarce labor factor. We utilize data from two recent surveys on individuals' attitudes toward different facets of trade and its effects to examine this hypothesis empirically. Rejecting a monolithic definition of 'women,' we find that disaggregating by education level illuminates to some extent what underlying characteristics might be helping to drive some of these findings. Lower-skilled women in the US are much less likely to support free trade compared to higher-skilled women and this may largely explain previous negative findings. The low versus high-skill dynamic is, however, much less clear in the findings using survey data from a small sample of developing countries.
- Subjects
UNITED States; POLITICS &; gender; FREE trade; ECONOMIC attitudes; ECONOMIC security; UNITED States economic policy; HETEROGENEITY; FREE trade -- Social aspects; ECONOMIC policy -- Social aspects; SURVEYS
- Publication
Business & Politics, 2014, Vol 16, Issue 3, p453
- ISSN
1469-3569
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1515/bap-2013-0039