Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP18303
Authors: Felix Meier zu Selhausen; Jacob Weisdorf
Abstract: Using educational and occupational statistics derived from 30,000 marriage registers obtained from six major cities in British Africa, we show how early-colonial mission education helped African men access formal labour. Women were relegated to informal and homemaking activities instead, even if mission schooling facilitated their social mobility via marriage. The early-colonial rise in gender inequality was followed by remarkable decline herein after World War II helped by Africanisation and feminisation of the civil service alongside Western women’s liberalisation movement. This process was relatively faster in West Africa where women’s precolonial tradition of economic independence contested colonial ideals of domestic virtue.
Keywords: Africanisation; Colonisation; Development; Feminisation; Gender Inequality; Labour; Missionaries; Schooling
JEL Codes: N37; O18; J16
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| mission education (I25) | access to formal labor for African men (J46) |
| mission education (I25) | informal and domestic roles for women (D13) |
| women's access to formal work after World War II (J21) | narrowing of the gender gap in formal labor participation (J21) |
| Africanisation and feminisation of the civil service (O17) | women's access to formal work after World War II (J21) |
| precolonial tradition of women's economic independence (F54) | women's access to formal work after World War II (J21) |