Mind The Gap! The Influence of Family Systems on The Gender Education Gap in Developing Countries, 1950–2005

Abstract

This paper argues that, by shaping everyday attitudes towards women and perceptions of their value and decisions about them, family systems explain part of the difficulty in bridging the gap between men's and women's achievement in education. The gap is more pronounced outside the highly industrialized nations, where affordable mass education is not the standard, and gender differences in educational attainment are markedly affected by persisting cultural norms. I test this hypothesis by examining family systems that have had a lasting effect on gender norms. I find evidence that family systems explain gender differences in average years of education in 86 developing and middle-income countries around the globe, for the period 1950 to 2005.