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Title: One Question at a Time: The Impact of the American Civil War on Mobilization for Women’s Suffrage
Citation Type: Working Paper
Publication Year: 2024
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Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of the American Civil War on mobilization for women’s suffrage in the US. I construct a new dataset of soldiers enlisted in the Union army and their wartime experience, and locate them to their town of residence. Leveraging variation in casualty rates, I show that people from towns with more casualties were less likely to petition for women’s suffrage in the following years, consistent with a narrative that major events such as the Civil War can reallocate limited political attention and capacity, elevating some causes, while sidelining others. I find evidence of two possible mechanisms through which casualty rates drive these results. Firstly, Northern towns with higher casualties were more attune to the salience of Black rights, which the Civil War was fought over, resulting in a prioritization of this movement over women’s suffrage. Secondly, the collective trauma of casualties resulted in a tightening of pre-war gender norms of separate spheres that were not welcoming of female political empowerment.
Url: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5275049
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Authors: Calder, Alice
Series Title: SSRN
Publication Number: 5275049
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Pages: 1-61
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Data Collections: IPUMS USA - Ancestry Full Count Data, IPUMS NHGIS
Topics: Gender, Race and Ethnicity
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