Replication Data for "Repelling Rape: Foreign Direct Investment Empowers Women"

For marginalized social groups, global economic integration can offer new economic opportunities but may also trigger backlash by dominant groups that reinforces exclusion. Foreign direct investment (FDI), we argue, can empower women in a manner resilient to male backlash by both raising women’s income and exposing them to gender equality norms. India’s sudden 2005 FDI liberalization allows us to identify FDI’s causal effect on women’s empowerment and rape, a violent manifestation of male backlash. In FDI-exposed districts, rape declined, women’s relative wage growth doubled, and women voiced stronger support for women’s empowerment. Women in these districts exercised household bargaining leverage and political participation in ways that increase their safety and deters rape. FDI from low gender equality countries, which raises income but lacks equality norms, increases rape. We rule out several alternative mechanisms. Our findings establish a new channel through which economic integration advances social equality.