Evaluating a School-Based Gender Sensitization Program in India
The intergenerational transmission of gender attitudes in India, a setting where discrimination against women and girls is severe.
Abstract
This paper examines the intergenerational transmission of gender attitudes in India, a setting where discrimination against women and girls is severe.
The authors use survey data on gender attitudes (specifically, about the appropriate roles and rights of women and girls) collected from adolescents attending 314 schools in the state of Haryana, and their parents.
The authors found that when a parent holds a more discriminatory attitude, his or her child is about 15 to 20 percentage points more likely to hold the view. As a benchmark, classmates’ average gender attitudes have a similar effect size. The authors found that mothers influence children’s gender attitudes more than fathers do.
Parental attitudes also appear to influence their children’s aspirations; girls with more discriminatory parents are less likely to want to continue their schooling beyond secondary school.
This was funded under the J-PAL Post-Primary Education Initiative
Citation
Dhar, Diva, Tarun Jain, and Seema Jayachandran. Intergenerational Transmission of Gender Attitudes: Evidence from India. Working Paper, January 2016, 30p
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