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Box 7.6 � �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� economic development = �.�� economic development = �.�� at least some tertiary secondary completed primary completed no completed education

figure 7.11 Women's employment, varying only education and the level of economic development

numbers are controlled for the fact that in districts with more traditional care role norms the averages on other factors, such as the number of children and living in a city, differ as well (Figure 7.10b), the effect is more in line with expectations.99 _{Regardless of this, the effect of tertiary}

education is smaller in less traditional districts compared to the effects of secondary and primary education in those districts. In less traditional areas, lower-educated women are more often employed, while for tertiary-educated women the traditionalism of the norms matters less in the education payoff. Simultaneously, in less traditional districts, the difference between primary and secondary-educated women on the one hand and women without education on the other is larger than in more traditional areas. This seems to go against the formulated expectations. An explanation might be that the transmission of norms takes place during (primary and secondary) education, which means that women without any education are less ‘affected’ by the cultural norms. Consequently, women without education remain in rather similar positions regardless of the cultural environment, while this environment makes a difference for primary- and secondary- educated women, for whom the added value of their education differs with the norms in society. After further inspection, the results tend provisionally to confirm the expectations for both cultural norm variables (see Box 7.6). However, several more assumptions had to be made to come to these conclusions. Nonetheless, the results are more in favour of the hypotheses than that they contradict them. Overall, public norms do influence the impact of education. Tertiary- educated women seem least influenced by these norms, the effect of tertiary education seems to make them almost immune to these norms, whereas lower-educated women are not. In other words, the additional returns of a higher educational level are lower in districts with less conservative norms.

The effect of education also seems to differ with the level of economic development in an area, but not according to the expectations or in line with the results for the cultural norms variables above. The effect of primary education is smaller in richer districts, but the effects of secondary and tertiary education are larger there (Figure 7.11). Especially the lower levels of employment for the three lowest educational levels seem problematic in richer districts, as well as the negative interaction for the dummy comparing primary to no education. One explanation for this result might be found in the consideration that economic development is not only connected with value change and labour market structure, but also with a decreased economic need to become employed (see the previous chapter). Economic needs are lower in more economically developed districts, and thus women work less in those districts, regardless of their educational level. However, in a poorer district, economic needs can be expected to push women onto the labour market, especially those from lower economic strata (i.e. the lower educated). Of the lower educated, those with some education can more easily find a job. This explains the variation in the difference between women without education and women with primary education. The weak effect of tertiary education in poorly developed districts might then capture the general absence of jobs, as enough higher-educated men are available to fill the positions.

In this reasoning, I do assume that education and wealth overlap. Yet this is not a mere assumption: based on household assets (car, electricity, radio, refrigerator), I created a five- point scale running from 1 to 5 indicating the household’s wealth. Comparing these figures with education shows a strong correlation: women without education have an average household wealth score of 1.8; with primary education 2.5; secondary 3.2; tertiary 3.7.100

In sum, the surprising effect of economic development seems to be related to the observation that economic development is a container concept harbouring many processes, including labour demand and economic needs. After controlling for some of these effects, economic development seems to impact the effect of education, though in a different way than my expectations regarding labour market structures and values suggested (Box 7.7 shows the hypothesis and outcome).

7.5.5 POLICIES

Of the three groups of interactions, the results are most ambiguous for the two policy interactions. The interactions with traditional policies show the expected negative signs, but

100 As said before, it is hard to include wealth levels at the household level: the risk of serious biases due to endogeneity is too large. It is possible to control for the interaction of economic development with having a spouse and the presence of a male breadwinner, but these cannot be expected to capture the full economic need effect. In an additional model, interaction terms between economic development and the two economic needs variables (partner, male age head of household) are included to test this reasoning. Both interaction terms show the expected negative interaction effect: a strengthening effect. The interaction for partner is highly significant (p<0.001), for the presence of a working-age male head of household it is only significant at a 10% criterion). In richer districts the difference between women with and without partner/working age male head of household is larger. This can be interpreted as to say that having a partner in a poorer district does not alleviate the economic need enough to keep women from entering the labour market.

7.7 To the extent that the economic development in a community increases, the smaller the effect of a woman’s education on