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Gender roles and the education gender gap in Turkey

Version 2 2024-06-17, 16:13
Version 1 2015-11-12, 00:11
journal contribution
posted on 2016-12-01, 00:00 authored by A Caner, Cahit Guven, C Okten, S O Sakalli
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

History

Journal

Social indicators research: an international and interdisciplinary journal for quality-of-life measurement

Issue

129

Season

3

Pagination

1231 - 1254

Publisher

Springer

Location

New York, N.Y.

ISSN

1573-0921

Language

eng

Publication classification

C Journal article; C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2015, Springer