Little is known about the effects of political conflict on the status of women in society. If conflicts result in opinions moving to the extremes, then more conservative areas might become less favorable to women, while more left-leaning areas might become more favorable. To consider this, the case of Greece after the Second World War is exploited, a time when the country became highly polarized between left and right ideologies, resulting in a three-year civil war. A referendum regarding the reinstatement of the (conservative) monarchy is used as an indicator of political beliefs, and, in a differences-in-differences setting, it is demonstrated that 10% greater political opposition to the monarchy implied that female labor force participation was 1.4% higher after the war.
Xanthi Tsoukli is a PhD student at SDU's Historical Economics and Development Group. In one of her papers, discussed in this interview, she addresses female labour force participation and its interactions with political conflict by using data from Greece following the end of World War Two.
Download paper here.