 Closing the gap: Effect of a gender quota on women’s access to education in AfghanistanRafiuddin Najam Economics of Education Review, 2024, vol. 99, issue C Abstract: Affirmative action is a promising solution to the crucial challenge of bridging the gap in women’s access to higher education in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). I use public universities’ matriculation data from 2013–2018 and difference-in-differences estimators to examine the causal impact of a gender quota on women’s educational opportunities in Afghanistan. The quota increased the proportion of women in the treated concentration group by nine percentage points and the share of women from low socio-economic status by three percentage points. The expansion was associated with a 0.04-unit decline in the average score ratio of female-to-male applicants, driven by a reduction in the score threshold needed for women’s admission. The effects were condensed in competitive concentrations, where the overall share of women and women with low SES increased by 17 and four percentage points, respectively. The findings suggest that affirmative action is a viable option for addressing the gender gap in fragile settings. Keywords: Affirmative action; Gender; Women’s education; Access; Afghanistan (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:99:y:2024:i:c:s0272775724000037 DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2024.102509 Access Statistics for this article Economics of Education Review is currently edited by E. Cohn More articles in Economics of Education Review from Elsevier |
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