Female Leadership Raises Aspirations and Educational Attainment for Girls: A Policy Experiment in India

Exploiting a randomized natural experiment in India, we show that female leadership influences adolescent girls' career aspirations and educational attainment. A1993 law reserved leadership positions for women in randomly selected village councils. Using 8453 surveys of adolescents aged 11 to 1...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 2012-02, Vol.335 (6068), p.582-586
Main Authors: Beaman, Lori, Duflo, Esther, Pande, Rohini, Topalova, Petia
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adolescents
Affirmative Action
Aspirations (Psychology)
Child care
Educational Attainment
Educational Status
Female
Gender roles
Humans
India
Leadership
Local Government
Male
Men
Outcomes of education
Parents
Policy
Politics
Role
Role models
Sex Characteristics
Sociology
Sociology of the family. Age groups
Sociology of work
Sociology of work and sociology of organizations
Standard deviation
Surveys and Questionnaires
T tests
Woman social status. Women's emancipation
Women
Womens studies
Working population. Employment. Women's work
Young adults
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Summary:Exploiting a randomized natural experiment in India, we show that female leadership influences adolescent girls' career aspirations and educational attainment. A1993 law reserved leadership positions for women in randomly selected village councils. Using 8453 surveys of adolescents aged 11 to 15 and their parents in 495 villages, we found that, relative to villages in which such positions were never reserved, the gender gap in aspirations closed by 20% in parents and 32% in adolescents in villages assigned a female leader for two election cycles. The gender gap in adolescent educational attainment was erased, and girls spent less time on household chores. We found no evidence of changes in young women's labor market opportunities, which suggests that the impact of women leaders primarily reflects a role model effect.
ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.1212382