@TechReport{iza:izadps:dp18955,
            	author={Aminjonov, Ulugbek and Bargain, Olivier B.},
            	title={Configurations of Ancestral Norms and Women’s Empowerment},
            	year={2026},
	month={Sep},
            	institution={Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)},
            	address={Bonn},
            	type={IZA Discussion Paper},
            	number={18955},
            	url={https://www.iza.org/publications/dp18955},
	abstract={This paper examines how combinations of ancestral cultural norms are associated with women’s empowerment across ethnic groups worldwide. Linking DHS data to the Ethnographic Atlas, we develop a hybrid supervised–unsupervised approach combining Partial Least Squares and k-means clustering to identify five probabilistic normative regimes. Severe disempowerment is associated with an accumulation of restrictive norms, while religious norms and women’s agricultural roles distinguish higher-empowerment environments within broadly patriarchal configurations. Further up the gradient, contrasts concern hierarchical social institutions, then kinship and the loosening of patriarchal arrangements, before more gender-neutral configurations prevail at the highest empowerment levels. Norms’ salience varies with the configurations in which they are embedded, revealing strongly non-monotonic patterns. These findings are robust to adjustment for contemporary socioeconomic conditions and a range of sensitivity checks. The analysis provides a global mapping of ancestral normative environments associated with women’s agency and identifies configurations most closely related to severe intra-household inequality.},
	keywords={women’s empowerment;ancestral norms;cultural persistence;kinship systems;machine learning;gender inequality;DHS;Ethnographic Atlas},
            }