IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp7059.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Going to School in Purdah: Female Schooling, Mobility Norms and Madrasas in Bangladesh

Author

Listed:
  • Asadullah, Niaz

    () (University of Malaya)

  • Wahhaj, Zaki

    () (University of Kent)

Abstract

This paper looks at the determinants of secondary school attendance in Bangladesh with a focus on the interaction between community gender norms and relative supply of madrasas (i.e. Islamic schools). We present a theoretical framework where the probability of children's school participation varies with respect to a non-economic factor – how the community observes social norms regarding female mobility – conditional upon the types of available schools. Household data from the Bangladesh Demographic Health Survey (BDHS) is combined with community information on the availability of non-religious secondary schools and madrasas to test our theoretical predictions. We find that in communities which are more 'progressive', in the sense that women have a relatively high level of mobility, the effect of non-religious school availability on attendance does not vary by gender. However in the more 'conservative communities', female schooling is more sensitive to the availability of, or distance to, madrasas.

Suggested Citation

  • Asadullah, Niaz & Wahhaj, Zaki, 2012. "Going to School in Purdah: Female Schooling, Mobility Norms and Madrasas in Bangladesh," IZA Discussion Papers 7059, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7059
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ftp.iza.org/dp7059.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Deon Filmer & Norbert Schady, 2008. "Getting Girls into School: Evidence from a Scholarship Program in Cambodia," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56, pages 581-617.
    2. Charles F. Manski, 2000. "Economic Analysis of Social Interactions," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 115-136, Summer.
    3. Schuler, Sidney Ruth & Bates, Lisa M. & Islam, Farzana & Islam, Md. Khairul, 2006. "The timing of marriage and childbearing among rural families in Bangladesh: Choosing between competing risks," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(11), pages 2826-2837, June.
    4. Lloyd, Cynthia B & Mete, Cem & Sathar, Zeba A, 2005. "The Effect of Gender Differences in Primary School Access, Type, and Quality on the Decision to Enroll in Rural Pakistan," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 53(3), pages 685-710, April.
    5. Zeba A. Sathar & Cynthia B. Lloyd, 1994. "Who Gets Primary Schooling in Pakistan: Inequalities among and within Families," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 33(2), pages 103-134.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    More about this item

    Keywords

    burka; school availability; gender norms; female education; madrasa; Bangladesh;

    JEL classification:

    • D04 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Policy: Formulation; Implementation; Evaluation
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7059. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Mark Fallak). General contact details of provider: http://www.iza.org .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.