Historical Europe in the Asian “mirror”: challenges and prospects of comparing the Patriarchy Index across space and time

Abstract Scholars have long argued that the familial, demographic, and sociocultural conditions in historical Europe left little room for patriarchal bias compared to Asia. However, these claims have not been rigorously tested through large-scale, data-driven, comparative analyses and statistical modeling. This paper fills this gap by applying Gruber and Szołtysek (Hist Fam 2016. https://doi.org/10.1080/1081602X.2014.1001769 ) Patriarchy Index to IPUMS-international census microdata from 857 regional populations in historical Europe and 21 Asian/North African countries after 1970 (93 million people). Our descriptive, spatial, and multilevel regression approaches challenge the “patriarchal East” vs. “liberated West” dualism. We find that some historical European areas were more patriarchal than the contemporary Asian populations, and several regions in both Europe and Asia show less pronounced patriarchal tendencies than predicted by the models. Finally, we show that Asia and historical Europe are remarkably similar in the mechanisms influencing patriarchy. Overall, our work provides ample evidence that the historical patterns of patriarchy in Europe are not unique.