Traditional Gender Roles and Opposition to Trade in the United States

• In Event: Trade and Gender

Abstract

We offer and test a theory of American opposition to free trade that is built on Americans’ affinity for male-as-breadwinner gender roles. Traditional labor market gender roles prioritize a single-earner household, with men working outside the home and women working as caregivers within it. Those roles depend on the sort of stable male employment that has traditionally been provided by blue-collar manufacturing jobs. Those jobs are declining in the United States, in part because of trade competition. We argue that Americans that value the male-as-breadwinner model oppose trade because it threatens that model's viability. We test our theory using data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) and find strong evidence in favor of it. Americans that embrace male-as-breadwinner gender roles are particularly skeptical of free trade. Evidence of such a relationship extends back to 1996 but is especially strong post-2008.

Authors

• Andrew Kerner, Michigan State University

• Jane Lawrence Sumner, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities