Gender-Discriminatory Laws and Women’s Economic Agency Mala Htun,* 1 Francesca R. Jensenius, 2 and Jami Nelson-Nu ~ nez 1 Recent years have seen widespread advances in women’s legal rights in many countries. In other places, restrictions on women’s autonomy remain entrenched. This study explores cross-country patterns in the association between gender- discriminatory legislation and various indicators of women’s economic agency. We find that restrictions on legal capacity predict women’s asset ownership and labor force participation, while discrimination in wage work and parental leave are associated with the size and direction of wage gaps. These findings highlight the importance of conceptualizing and measuring legal rights and their potential effects as multidimensional. Introduction Laws and policies upheld by the state play a potentially important role in shaping women’s economic agency, an important objective of human de- velopment. When women have access to income and resources, their lives improve and so does the society around them. Studies have found, for ex- ample, that women’s increased labor force participation changes gender norms, the political participation of women, and fertility rates. Women who control property have more bargaining power at home and are more able to leave abusive relationships. Women who control household money tend to spend it in ways that benefit children and society, such as on food, clothing, medicine, and education (Agarwal 1994, 1997; Deere and De Leal 2014; Duflo 2012; Hakim 1996; Hashemi, Schuler, and Riley 1996; Iversen and Rosenbluth 2008; Okin 1989; Panda and Agarwal 2005; Rosenbluth 2006; UN 2015). 1 University of New Mexico 2 University of Oslo and Norwegian Institute of International Affairs *malahtun@unm.edu This article forms part of the special issue “Legal Change and Women’s Economic Empowerment” (2019) co- edited by Mala Htun, Francesca R. Jensenius and Liv Tønnessen. socpol: Social Politics, Summer 2019 pp. 193–222 doi:10.1093/sp/jxy042 # The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com Advance Access publication January 29, 2019 Social Politics 2019 Volume 26 Number 2 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sp/article/26/2/193/5303946 by guest on 05 June 2022