Politico-Economic Regimes and Attitudes: Female Workers under State-Socialism

This Paper investigates whether attitudes are affected by politico-economic regimes. We exploit the efforts of state-socialist regimes to promote women’s economic inclusion. Using the German partition after WWII, we show that women from East-Germany are more likely to place importance on career success compared to women from West-Germany. Further, the population at large in East-Germany is less likely to hold traditional gender-role attitudes. Examining possible mechanisms, we find that the change in attitudes under the East-German regime was larger in areas where the growth in female employment was larger. A comparison of Eastern versus Western Europe confirms these results.