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Does earning income empower women in patriarchal societies? We conducted two original experiments in Jordan investigating how patriarchal norms constrain the effects of relative earned income on women's bargaining power and women's preferences for paid employment opportunities. In the first experiment, we randomized women's relative earned income in a bargaining lab game involving male and female partners. Women with higher incomes than their partners behave more efficaciously than women with lower incomes. They are only more influential over bargaining outcomes, however, when paired with women, not men. We then employed a conjoint survey experiment using hypothetical job opportunities to assess how the prospect of higher incomes and working alongside men affect women's job preferences. Though higher wages make jobs more desirable, mixed-sex work spaces are a strong deterrent. Together, these findings demonstrate that patriarchal norms constrain women's desire to engage in paid labor and segment the empowering effects of earning income.

This chapter examines the relationship between ethnic politics and business politics through the lens of trade reform in Jordan. It argues that ethnic boundaries shape the types of protection liberalizing regimes can extend to import-competing industrialists. When pressured to lower trade barriers, ethnic ties between policymakers and import-competing industrialists enable protectionist deals—lax tax and regulatory enforcement, uncompetitive government contracts, insider information—in exchange for liberalizing policies. Lacking the networks and social sanctioning mechanisms to maintain these informal arrangements across ethnic lines, policymakers are more likely to offer more formalized forms of protection, like tariffs to non-coethnic import-competing industrialists. Whether ethnic boundaries blur or reinforce state–capital lines may structure how regimes bargain, accommodate, and ultimately sustain alliances with private sector elites under the strains of economic reform.