Women Leaving the Playpen: the Emancipating Role of Female Suffrage.

This article examines how political empowerment through female suffrage (FS) influenced Swiss women's emancipation as reflected in their life choices, exploiting the staggered introduction of FS across Swiss cantons between 1919 and 1971. Using census and survey data, the study finds that women exposed to FS earlier in life were more likely to participate in the labor force, attain higher education, marry less, and divorce more compared to those enfranchised later, with effects diminishing as age at exposure increased. The analysis controls for confounding factors through a border design comparing neighboring municipalities with different FS introduction timings and validates the identifying assumptions by testing for parallel cohort trends and absence of policy confounds. Additional evidence suggests that FS increased women's self-efficacy and altered gender norms, with some reinforcement from changes in men's attitudes, while no significant spillover effects across cantonal borders were detected. The findings indicate that constitutional political rights can trigger medium-term transformations in gender roles and individual life decisions beyond immediate political participation.