Women, medieval commerce, and the education gender gap

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu We investigate the historical determinants of the education gender gap in Italy in the late nineteenth century, immediately following the country's Unification. We use a comprehensive newly-assembled database including 69 provinces over twenty-year sub-samples covering the 1861-1901 period. We find robust evidence that female primary school attainment, relative to that of males, is positively associated with the medieval pattern of commerce, along the routes that connected Italian cities among themselves and with the rest of the world. The effect of medieval commerce is particularly strong at the non-compulsory upperprimary level and persists even after controlling for alternative long-term determinants reflecting the geographic, economic, political, and cultural differentiation of medieval Italy. The long-term influence of medieval commerce quickly dissipates after national compulsory primary schooling is imposed at Unification, suggesting that the channel of transmission was the larger provision of education for girls in commercial centers. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SJEL Classification: E02, H75, I25, J16, N33, O15

Origins and Implications of Family Structure Across Italian Provinces in Historical Perspective

“…They find that a higher female to male enrollment rate ratio in upper primary schools is associated with nuclear residential habits. Bertocchi and Bozzano (2016) explore the link between family culture and medieval commerce, a factor which is also associated with gendered human capital accumulation, and establish a positive and significant correlation between medieval commerce and the diffusion of the egalitarian family type with late marriage. Bozzano (2016) investigates the impact of family culture on present-day women's empowerment across Italian provinces and finds a strong and persistent effect of inherited family culture as measured by the prevailing fertility norms in the early twentieth century, as well as a significant association with the Todd family types.…”

On the historical roots of women's empowerment across Italian provinces: religion or family culture?

“…Female to male ratio labour force participation rates -2001: (female labour force participation/ male labour force participation). Female to male ratio literacy rate -1861: (female population able to read and write in 1861/ female population aged 5 or more in 1861)/ (male population able to read and write in 1861/ male population aged Bertocchi and Bozzano (2013) 30 5 or more in 1861).…”

Gender Gaps in Education

“…Turning to enrollments, in the European context gender parity was nearly reached by the second mid-nineteenth century, at the primary level, in Great Britain, Belgium, and Prussia, followed by the Netherlands and Italy, while many other countries, such as Spain, lagged behind (Bertocchi and Bozzano 2016). Italy actually showed a peculiar pattern in the GPI in enrollments, mostly due to the wide regional divide which characterized the country in many dimensions, including human capital formation: between 1861 and 1911, while higher and increasing gender equality, both in enrollments and literacy, was documented in the North, very low and stagnating levels were found instead in the Center-South of the country, a pathdependent pattern mostly inherited from preunification states and their differing educational policies prior to 1861 (Bozzano and Cappelli 2019;Cappelli and Vasta 2019;Ciccarelli and Weisdorf 2019).…”

“…As a result, medieval and early modern commercial centers were characterized by relatively high female literacy rates (Hoftijzer 2001;Spufford 1995) and numeracy rates (de Moor and van Zanden 2008). It has been documented that these early gains in female education, reached in the distant past, were able to change the role of women in the corresponding societies in a persistent fashion, thus perpetuating their original influence through the intergenerational transmission of human capital and gender roles: for instance, more equal educational attainment for girls is still observed in the second half of the nineteenth century in those Italian provinces that hosted a trade center in the Middle Ages (Bertocchi and Bozzano 2016).…”