Gender Roles and the Education Gender Gap in Turkey

Abstract

Using nationally representative data on individual subjective views on gender roles, we examine the gender gap in educational achievement in Turkey and show that the cultural bias against the education of girls is a fundamental factor behind their low educational attainment in socially conservative societies. The 1997 education reform in Turkey extended compulsory schooling from 5 to 8 years. Using the reform as a natural experiment, we investigate the impact of the reform on the effects of mothers' traditional views in determining children's educational attainment. We find that the reform helped reduce school dropout rates across the country. Nevertheless, regardless of the mother's view on gender roles, the reductions in school dropout rates were similar for boys and girls, failing to eliminate the gender gap against girls. Turkey is an excellent environment to study the effects of societal gender roles since it combines modernity with traditionalism and displays a wide spectrum of views on gender roles. It is also one of the few developing countries where a gender gap to the detriment of females still exists in educational achievement.

The Role of Culture on Female Labor Supply: Evidence from Turkey

“…The regional averages (NUTS-1 level) of the indicator in Turkey vary between 3.22 in the most gender equal region and 4.12 in the most unequal region. By comparison, the average value of the indicator is about 3.23 in Chile, Romania, Spain and Great Britain, about 3.48 in China and Czech Republic, 3.59 in Russia, 3.78 in India and about 4 in Saudi Arabia and Algeria (Caner et al (2016)). Anecdotal evidence suggests that Alevi Muslims have more gender equal views than Sunni Muslims.…”

“…In socially conservative parts of Turkey, a traditional view on gender roles prevails (Caner et al (2016)). Indeed, several studies that have conducted face-to-face interviews with parents, teachers and local officials in Turkey report conservative views against girls' education as a major impediment (Alat and Alat (2011); Tunç (2009)).…”

Transformational Utopian/Dystopian Projections in Turkish Literature: Teleandregenos Ütopyasında Evlilik Hayatı by Adam Şenel / Transformatsioonilised utoopia/düstoopia projektsioonid türgi kirjanduses: Adam Şeneli „Teleandregenos Ütopyasında Evlilik Haya

“…. ] parents stated that low income and social pressure against sending girls to mixed sex schools as the most important reasons for keeping girls out of school" (Caner et al 2016(Caner et al , 1232.…”

Education and Prosocial Behavior: Evidence from Time Use Survey

“…Finally, our study relates to the extended literature on causal effects of the change in the compulsory schooling law on different outcome variables such as marriage market outcomes (Hener and Wilson, 2018), labor market outcomes (Angrist and Krueger, 1991;Aydemir and Kırdar, 2013;Mocan, 2014;Torun, 2018), child's educational outcomes, drop-out decisions (Oreopoulos, 2006;Oreopoulos, 2007;Caner, Guven, Okten and Sakalli, 2016), civic and political behavior outcomes (Dee, 2004;Milligan, Moretti and Oreopoulos, 2004;Larreguy and Marshall, 2017;, health outcomes (Cesur, Dursun, and Mocan, 2018;Kırdar, Dayıoğlu, andKoç, 2018, subjective well-being (Dursun andCesur, 2016) and domestic violence outcomes (Erten and Keskin, 2018;Abdurahimov and Akyol, 2018). We contribute to this growing literature by offering the first study to examine the effects of education on prosocial behavior by using a change in compulsory schooling law as an instrument.…”