International Organizations and Gender Parity in Education: Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)¹

Abstract

This study is a novel contribution to the literature regarding the influence of UNs Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) on women’s relative progress in education. We create a unique data set by focusing on 190 UN countries for the period 1980–2018and utilize pooled cross-sectional OLS and Panel Fixed effects models to study the impact of the various aspects of the ratification of the convention. We focus on Female to Male Primary Enrollment ratio (PrimaryFM), Gross Secondary Gender Parity Index (SecondaryGPI), and Gross Tertiary Gender Parity Index (TertiaryGPI). We find a positive relationship between various aspects of CEDAW ratification and progress in educational outcomes for women. Policymakers should focus not only on the ratification of international treaties, but also on all facets of ratification, such as closer adherence to treaties as evidenced by consistent behavior and implementation of changes, which in turn paints a more complete picture.

KEYWORDS :

• Education
• gender gap in education
• global education equity
• social policy

Notes

2 For example, consider Countries A and B. Both have ratified CEDAW 20 years ago, one has submitted 1 report, while Country B submitted a total of 4 reports (initial report after 1 year, and additional reports every 4 years). Our results suggest that, controlling for country and year fixed effects, and holding constant Gross Domestic Product and Educational spending, Country B enjoys better female relative educational outcomes compared to Country A. Holding everything constant, another Country C that only submitted more than 1 report compared to Country A, fares better than Country A. Future research may explore the relationship between gender equity on education and other aspects of ratification of CEDAW that measure the intensity of adherence to the Convention.

3 The World Bank Data Bank: http://data.worldbank.org/.

4 The World bank data on educational variables are reported by UNESCO Institute for Statistics (uis.unesco.org). Data on education are collected by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics from official responses to its annual education survey. For instance, please see https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.PRM.ENRR.FE for Primary school enrollment for female as a percentage of gross enrollment.

5 Both GDP per capita and education spending as a percentage of GDP are from World Bank databank (https://data.worldbank.org/) and are defined as follows, respectively: “GDP per capita is gross domestic product divided by midyear population. GDP is the sum of gross value added by all resident producers in the economy plus any product taxes and minus any subsidies not included in the value of the products. It is calculated without making deductions for depreciation of fabricated assets or for depletion and degradation of natural resources. Data are in current US dollars,” and “Government expenditure on education, total (% of GDP): General government expenditure on education (current, capital, and transfers) is expressed as a percentage of GDP. It includes expenditure funded by transfers from international sources to government. General government usually refers to local, regional and central governments.”

6 Both variables are available in the world Bank data bank: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.COM.DURS + and https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.SEC.TCHR.FE.ZS.

7 The maximum years passed after CEDAW ratification is 39 in our sample for those countries that ratified the convention in the first year. We also estimated a dynamic model with 2-year increments, which yields similar results. We do not report the 2-year increment model to conserve space, but results are available upon request.

8 The years since ratification dummies have a top code at 36 years to keep the results tractable.