Till marriage do us part: Education and remittances from married women in Africa

Comparative Education Review

Volumn 50, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 1-20

  Eloundou Enyegue, Parfait M ^a   Calvès, Anne Emmanuèle ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33644776800     PISSN: 00104086     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/498326     Document Type: Article

References (35)

1. Rae L. Blumberg, "A General Theory of Gender Stratification," in Sociological Theory, ed. R. E. Collins (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1984), 23-101;
2. Lisa A. Cubbins, "Women, Men, and the Division of Power: A Study of Gender Stratification in Kenya," Social Forces 69 (1991): 1063-83.
3. Adhiambo Odaga and Ward Heneveld, "Girls and Schools in Sub-Saharan Africa: From Analysis to Action," World Bank Technical Paper no. 298 (World Bank, Washington, DC, 1995);
4. Claudia Buchmann, "Family Structure, Parental Perceptions, and Child Labor in Kenya: What Factors Determine Who Is Enrolled in School?" Social Forces 78 (2000): 1349-78.
5. The Ethnographic Atlas indicates patrilocality as the most common form of residence in about 75 percent of the cases within the Africa region (see http://boas.ukc.ac.uk/cgi-bin/uncgi/ethnoatlas/ atlas.vopts).
6. Inderjit Singh (director of the census in Punjab, India), "Son Preference of Punjabis in Three National Contexts" (paper presented at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, spring 2001).
7. Odaga and Heneveld, "Girls and Schools in Sub-Saharan Africa," 20.
8. For instance, in southern Cameroon the traditional ceremony culminates at dusk in a send-off ritual that involves a stealthy removal of the bride by the groom's family. Bride and groom are first smeared with the blood of a freshly slaughtered goat (a symbol of fertility), and then they are expected to run away from the bride's village, without ever turning their heads back.
9. Yean-Ju Lee, William L. Parish, and Robert J. Willis, "Sons, Daughters, and Intergenerational Support in Taiwan," American Journal of Sociology 99 (1994): 1010-41, 1027.
10. See Francis R. Mahieu, "Transfers et Communauté Africaine," Stateco 136 (June 1989): 107-36;
11. Uche Isiugo-Abanihe, "Child Fosterage in West Africa," Population and Development Review 11 (1985): 53-73;
12. Sarah E. Castle, "Child Fostering and Children's Nutritional Outcomes in Rural Mali: The Role of Female Status in Directing Transfers," Social Science and Medicine 40 (1995): 679-93;
13. A. McDaniel and E. Zulu, "Mothers, Fathers, and Children: Regional Patterns in Parent-Child Residence in Sub-Saharan Africa," African Population Studies 11 (1996): 1-28;
14. Anne Case, Christina Paxson, and Joseph Ableidinger, "Orphans in Africa: Parental Death, Poverty, and School Enrollment," Demography 41 (2004): 483-508.
15. John Caldwell, Theory of Fertility Decline (London: Academic Press, 1982).
16. Robert Lucas and Oded Stark, "Motivations to Remit: Evidence from Botswana," Journal of Political Economy 93 (1985): 901-18.
17. Remittances can also be seen as an investment to secure inheritable assets. See John Hoddinott, "A Model of Migration and Remittances Applied to Western Kenya," Oxford Economic Papers 46 (1994): 459-76.
18. See World Bank, Gender Equality and the Millennium Development Goals (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003).
19. See also Elizabeth King and Anne Hill, eds., Women's Education in Developing Countries: Barriers, Benefits and Policies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).
20. In his contribution to his edited volume, T. Paul Schultz notes that, while studies have adequately documented the benefits of female education for women themselves, their nuclear families, and society as a whole, the evidence remains "fuzzier [at the] intermediate level of aggregation" (T. Paul Schultz, "Investments in the Schooling and Health of Women and Men: Quantities and Returns," in Investments in Women's Human Capital, ed. T. Paul Schultz [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995], 15-50, 31). In particular, few studies have examined the possible benefits to women's families of origin, even though these families - not society or future husbands - bear the costs of their daughters' schooling.
21. Work in Kenya by Buchmann ("Family Structure, Parental Perceptions, and Child Labor in Kenya") illustrates the strategic interpretation. She finds that the schooling of girls mirrors parental expectations of future economic assistance. In particular, "[girls' school enrollment suffers] if parents perceive limited returns to girls' education due to gender discrimination in the labor market" (1371). By contrast, work by Lee, Parish, and Willis ("Sons, Daughters, and Intergenerational Support in Taiwan") suggests the possibility of an endogenous association. They note a pattern of correlated giving whereby giving to the wife's family rises concurrently with giving to the husband's family. This may occur if daughters choose their husbands based in part on apparent commitment to the welfare of both families.
22. "Rotten kid" here refers to nonaltruistic offspring who find ways to exploit and not remit to parents. Sec, e.g., Robert Trivers, Social Evolution (Menlo Park, CA: Benjamin/Cummings, 1985).
23. w) and by these households' continued commitment to parents' welfare (c).
24. Blumberg, "A General Theory of Gender Stratification."
25. Rae L. Blumberg, Gender, Family, and Economy: The Triple Overlap (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1991).
26. Eligible women (ages 15+) were sampled through a multistage procedure involving sampling of one subdivision within each of the country's 10 provinces, followed by a sampling of four or five communities per subdivision. Finally, 35-105 households per community were sampled, depending on community size. Samples within these cities were drawn following a similar multistage procedure.
27. See Eleanor Fapohunda, "The Nonpooling Household: A Challenge to Theory," in A Home Divided: Women and Income in the Third World, ed. Daisy Dwyer and Judith Bruce (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988), 143-54.
28. See Parfait M. Eloundou-Enyegue and Shannon C. Stokes, "Will Economic Crises in Africa Weaken Rural-Urban Solidarity? Evidence from Cameroon," Rural Sociology 67 (2002): 278-98.
29. See data from Demographic and Health Surveys for Malawi, Zambia, and Uganda at http:// www.measuredhs.com/statcompiler/table_builder.cfm?userid = 152624&usertabid = 167510.
30. Shireen Jejeebhoy, Women 's Education, Autonomy and Reproductive Behaviour: Experience from Developing Countries (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995).
31. Niara Sudarkasa, "Where Women Work: A Study of Yoruba Women in the Market Place and the Home," University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology paper no. 55 (Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1973).
32. See, e.g., Marie Sengel, "Nana-Benz de Noailles," Hommes et Migrations 1224 (2000): 71-78.
33. See Eloundou-Enyegue and Stokes, "Will Economic Crises in Africa Weaken Rural-Urban Solidarity?"
34. Aafke Komter, "Hidden Power in Marriage," Gender and Society 3 (1989): 187-216.
35. Enid Schildkrout, Sex and Age as Principles of Social Differentiation, ASA Monograph no. 17 (London: Academic Press, 1978). We are indebted to one reviewer for drawing our attention to this important argument and for suggesting appropriate references.