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Gender Roles and the Education Gender Gap in Turkey

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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.

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Notes

  1. A cross-country comparison has been made by the authors using the European Social Survey and the World Values Survey data, with the purpose of comparing the variation within Turkey to the variation across country averages. These surveys ask respondents questions on gender inequality. In particular, one question asks whether they agree with the statement “when jobs are scarce, men should have more right to a job than women” (agree: 1, disagree: 0). The regional (NUTS-1 level) averages 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. The indicator ranges from 2.20 in Colombia and El Salvador) to 4.62 in Egypt and Iraq).

  2. Dinçer et al. (2013) analyze the effect of education reform on fertility and children’s health and find that the reform has had a substantial positive effect on girls’ schooling in their first stage regression. They do not question the effect of the reform on the gender gap.

  3. Such as the US (Angrist and Krueger 1991; Acemoglu and Angrist 2001), Taiwan (Chou et al. 2010), Britain and Northern Ireland (Oreopoulos 2006), Britain (Devereux and Hart 2010), Germany (Kemptner et al. 2011), the US and Norway (Black et al. 2008), and 12 European countries (Brunello et al. 2009).

  4. Because of a potential selection problem, we do not use the 2008 TDHS data, but we use only TDHS 2003 data. In 2008, the students who were not subject to the reform are 21 or older. Students who have mothers with a traditional view on gender roles are more likely to leave the household at an early age; therefore the pre-reform students that we would observe in the 2008 data are probably a selected sample.

  5. For children of mothers with non-traditional views, “Traditional” is 0. If the child is male, “Female” is 0. Hence the coefficient on “Post reform” (−14.9) implies that the reform increased the probability to stay in school by 14.9 % points for boys whose mother have a non-traditional view. For mothers with a traditional view, “Traditional” is 1 and the coefficient on “Post reform” (−14.9) plus the coefficient on “Post reform*Traditional” (−18.6) equals 33.5 % points of increased probability to stay in school for boys whose mothers have a traditional view. This corresponds to \(\beta_{4} + \beta_{5}\) in Eq. 2.

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Acknowledgments

The authors highly appreciate the comments and suggestions from the journal editor and three anonymous referees. The authors are grateful to seminar participants at METU and to the participants of Bilkent University Annual Summer Workshop in Economics, the National Workshop on Economics of Education at Bogazici University and the ESPE Conference for comments and helpful suggestions. The usual disclaimer applies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Ankara, Turkey

    Asena Caner

  2. Department of Economics, Deakin Business School, Deakin University, Geelong, Australia

    Cahit Guven

  3. Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey

    Cagla Okten

  4. Paris School of Economics, Paris, France

    Seyhun Orcan Sakalli

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  1. Asena Caner
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  2. Cahit Guven
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Correspondence to Asena Caner.

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Caner, A., Guven, C., Okten, C. et al. Gender Roles and the Education Gender Gap in Turkey. Soc Indic Res 129, 1231–1254 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-015-1163-7

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