Frontier History and Gender Norms in the United States

Gender inequality varies widely between and within countries, despite widespread technological and institutional changes favoring female empowerment. Persistent disparities between genders have prompted a growing number of cultural explanations. Some scholars emphasize deep-rooted historical norms around female work, marriage, familial structures and political behavior that offer novel insights into the modern landscape of gender inequality.

From the colonial era until the late 19th century, the United States underwent a process of rapid population growth and territorial expansion. Throughout this period, waves of settlers continually migrated westward as the country dispossessed Indigenous groups of their native lands. In the late 19th century, the US Census Bureau introduced the concept of the frontier—the line demarcating the edge of populated settlement—to clarify areas that had been settled from those that had not. Some historical narratives portray life on the frontier as blurring gender roles and empowering women, while others point to structural forces that confined women to motherhood and domesticity.

In a new National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, Martin Fizbein and coauthors show how US frontier history shaped a distinct geography of conservative gender norms across the country. Using Census data, they identify a process of cultural evolution that enshrined the stark “separate spheres” for men and women observed in classic historical accounts of gender roles in the US.

Main findings:

• Frontier locations had sharply male-biased sex ratios and a disproportionate share of young adults.
• Frontier women were more likely to be married both at earlier ages and with older men and have more children.
• The combination of high fertility and isolation on the frontier amplified women’s domestic duties, leaving limited scope for gainful female employment.
• While fewer frontier women reported gainful employment, those who did were more likely to be working in high-status occupations. This population of entrepreneurial women differed from settled areas of the country where men typically occupied such positions.

The patterns identified by the authors shed new light on the complex history of women’s life on the frontier. The findings also point to the especially important role of isolation from extended family and society at large in limiting frontier women’s ability to build a life outside the home. A small subset of women found their way to the top of the socioeconomic ladder in ways that might not have been feasible outside the frontier. However, in the long run, unequal gender norms came to dominate the frontier legacy and persist today.