Women’s political participation and gender gaps of education in China: 1950–1990

Does women’s political participation have long-lasting impacts on gender equality? Using female membership in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a measure for women’s political participation and relying on data provided by Chinese county chronicles, we show that female political participation in 1950 had a long-term and positive impact on gender equality of education in 1990. Relying on individual-level data provided by the 1990 census, we construct a panel dataset comprising of people of different age cohorts in individual counties and find that contemporary women’s political participation significantly narrows the gender gap by raising girls’ probability of enrollment and completion of school relative to those of boys. The positive effects remain when we use the time of “liberation”, i.e., the time when the CCP got control of a county, to construct an instrument for the female party membership in 1950 and future periods. These effects also remain significant when the period of Cultural Revolution is studied. Finally, we test two channels, the policy channel and the perception channel, by which these effects were possibly exerted. For the policy channel, public spending on education is studied; and for the perception channel, parents’ aspiration and investment for daughters’ education are studied. The paper finds supporting evidence for the perception channel, but not for the policy channel.