Children's Schooling in Rural Northwest China

Emily Hannum

Educational gender inequality in China’s poor rural areas has long captured the interest of policy makers and researchers. Scholars often emphasize disadvantages for girls that stem from traditional attitudes about girls’ and women’s abilities and roles, and from different expected returns to the family for educating sons and daughters. Families could expect different returns because they anticipate old age support from sons more than daughters, or because they perceive a gender gap in the earnings outcomes of schooling. These attitudes or preferences may translate to differences in aspirations for children and investments in children, based on their gender; differences in treatment may contribute to differences in children’s attitudes toward education, time use, and academic achievement. Eventually, some combination of these factors is thought to lead to observed differences in the educational attainment of boys and girls. Few studies, however, have sought to disentangle these relationships. Preliminary analyses of a survey of 2000 children ages 9-12 in rural Gansu, China suggest three striking findings. First, at this young age, by many measures, girls fare well: parental economic investments and provision of a learning environment are similar for girls and boys, as are children’s achievement, industriousness, academic confidence, and alienation from school. Second, significant disadvantages for girls do emerge in mothers’ and child’s aspirations: while aspirations are high for all children, they are higher for boys. Third, where differences exist, evidence suggests that they are linked to the household division of labor and to expected returns, more than to overtly discriminatory attitudes. Few mothers think that girls are less capable or worthy of investment than boys. However, the gender bias in allocating chores is pervasive, and appears linked to differences in children’s aspirations. Gender gaps in mothers’ aspirations appear larger in families that expect future support from sons and perceive gender differences in returns to education. Mother’s aspirations, in turn, partly explain gender differences in children’s aspirations. These findings suggest the need for a more sophisticated conceptualization of gender and educational opportunity in rural China.

About Emily Hannum

Emily Hannum is an assistant professor of sociology and education at University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include education and social stratification in developing countries, and focus on socio-economic, gender and ethnic inequalities in education in China. Since 1998, she has directed a research project in Gansu, China that investigates the family, school and community factors that support children’s education and healthy development in the context of rural poverty. She is also directing the Rural School Networks Project, a randomized experiment that investigates the impact of introducing information technology-enabled networks into isolated rural school communities in Northwest China. Recent publications include “Ethnic Differences in Basic Education in Reform-Era Rural China” (Demography 39 no. 1 (2002): 95-117) and “Education and Stratification in Developing Countries: A Review of Theories and Empirical Research” (with Claudia Buchmann, Annual Review of Sociology 27 (2001): 77-102).