Women and Radical Religious Rule: Evidence from Afghanistan

Type Working Paper
Title Women and Radical Religious Rule: Evidence from Afghanistan
Author(s)
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2013
URL http://www.sole-jole.org/14121.pdf
Abstract
We analyze how growing up under the Taliban rule (1996-2001) affects educational attainment and labor market outcomes of Afghan women. While in power, the Taliban ruled a large fraction of the Afghan territory. Using data from the National Risk and Vulnerability Assessment, we rely on the fact that, depending on their year of birth and district of residence, individuals were or were not exposed to the Taliban government during school age. Our Difference-in-Differences estimates show that women who were exposed to the Taliban government during school age are about 6 percentage points less likely to complete basic education than women who were not. Our regressions also suggest that these findings are not due to alternative mechanisms, such as the introduction in 1992 of the provisional Islamist government that came before the Taliban, cultural differences related to ethnicity or differences across districts in the number of violent events of the post-2001 insurgency. With regard to labor market outcomes, our analysis shows that women who were exposed to the radical religious rule during school age are less likely to be employed outside the household and more likely to have an agricultural job within the household, which is often an unpaid job. The labor market (education) consequences are larger (smaller) in absolute value in the capital, Kabul. We discuss our empirical findings in relation to the theoretical economic literature on radical religious groups.

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