This paper examines how gender norms shape development using novel cross-country proxies derived from U.S.-born descendants of immigrants (1955–2020). Progressive norms causally raise income, strengthen democratic institutions, expand women’s education, labor force participation, and political representation, and are associated with fewer and less lethal conflicts. Yet rapid liberalization also provokes backlash: higher female suicide rates, more intimate partner violence, and mobilization in misogynistic online communities. A sex decomposition shows that benefits flow through both women’s and men’s beliefs, while costs fall disproportionately on women. Culture thus emerges as both a driver of growth and a destabilizer of hierarchies.

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