Balancing School and Work with New Opportunities: Changes in Children’s Gendered Time Use in Ethiopia (2006-
2013)
Young Lives paper by Jo Boyden, Catherine Porter, Ina Zharkevich & Karin Heissler
Presented by Jo Boyden Adolescence, Youth and Gender conference
Oxford, 8-9 September 2016
BACKGROUND• Ethiopia:
– The poorest Young Lives country - rural livelihoods precarious
– Work by adolescents helps sustain household economy & inter-generational mutuality
• Motivation: – Early adolescence (10-14 years) = a time of growing
responsibility – paper focuses on age 12– Challenges of balancing time use between schooling &
work• Policy priorities:
– Government is committed to expanding school access– Prohibits work under age 14 & work that is harmful
• Policy assumptions:– Girls are consistently disadvantaged (lower education
aspirations, less school access & greater work burden)– Work and low education demand undermine schooling.
QUESTIONS1. How has the gendered time use of 12-year-
olds changed between 2006 and 2013?2. What drives gendered time use in early
adolescence?– Incentives around work:
• Household economic status • Household structure(sibling composition, birth order)• Work as informal learning• Work opportunities locally *• Perceptions of returns to work (including entry to
future occupation)– Incentives around education:
• Educational aspirations and perceived returns to school *
• School access *(including flexibility of school regime)
• School performance *
DATA AND METHODOLOGY• Ethiopia sample: Equal numbers of boys & girls
in two cohorts: 2,000 born in 2001 and 1,000 born in 1994, from five regions plus Addis Ababa
• Methods: – Five survey rounds (children & caregivers) – Four qualitative waves – interviews & focus
groups with a sub-sample of 60 children & caregivers (rural)
• Data points: The main activities of the two cohorts compared at age 12 – i.e. survey Round 2 (2006) for the Older Cohort & Round 4 (2013) for the Younger Cohort
• Survey definition of child work: work for pay outside the household, work on the household farm or enterprise, household chores & caring for others.
FINDINGS
• Boys: aim to become dependable economically through early engagement in productive work: – farming, herding livestock & fishing (in rural areas)
• Girls: assume reproductive roles facilitating marriage, domestic proficiency, parenthood: – making wot (sauce), baking sourdough bread, making
and selling farso (beer), fetching firewood & water, sibling care
• Gender fluid: birth order & sibling composition: e.g. Hadush, youngest of 8 & the only boy, cares for the cattle full-time while sisters are at school, but Mihretu goes to school because his two elder brothers take care of the cattle
• School also regarded as a responsibility:– household social mobility & intergenerational mutuality
ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES ARE GENDERED FROM AN EARLY AGE
• Caregivers:– around ¾ of caregivers in both 2006 & 2013 expected
their children to go to university – parents were more ambitious for sons in 2006, but by
2013 girls’ parents were more ambitious than boys’
• 12-year olds: more modest aims– around 70% aspired to go to university, slightly fewer
in 2013 than in 2006– the proportion of rural boys who aspired to go to
university fell from 67 % in 2006 to 55 % in 2013 – 85% of urban girls aimed to reach university in 2013,
a 7 percentage point increase on 2006
GENDER AND LOCATION MATTER FOR EDUCATION ASPIRATIONS
• Urban boys & girls were working significantly
fewer hours in 2013 than in 2006• In rural areas gendered disparities in time at work
grew: by 2013 girls time at work had fallen to a similar degree as urban children, but the figure for boys remained constant
• Trends also depend on types of work:– Rural boys & girls worked significantly longer hours
on family farms/enterprises by 2013 (boys, more than 2 hours per day & girls less than an hour)
– Chores & caring: made up 20 minutes less of daily routine in 2013 (3 hours per day for girls & under 2 hours for boys)
– Urban girls spent less time on domestic tasks in 2013, possibly because of greater attention to schooling.
TIME USE TRENDS AT AGE 12: WORK
• Enrolment levels of boys & girls at age 12 roughly constant across the period 2006-2013
• Gender disparities:– boys were less likely to be enrolled, with the gender
gap widening between 2006 and 2013 – a full 60% of Older-Cohort boys, compared to just 12
% of girls, were overage for their grade• Rural: Urban divide:
– part-time schooling in rural areas – enrolment was lower for rural children at age 12 – rural children had completed only 2.9 grades by age
12, as compared to 4.2 for urban children
TIME USE TRENDS AT AGE 12: SCHOOL
WORK AND SCHOOL COMPETE IN ZEYTUNI
• Part-time schooling - fewer boys & girls enrolled in 2013 than 2006 & fewer boys enrolled than girls
• A rise from an average of 4.6 hours of work a day in 2006 to 5.6 hours a day. Boys 6.3 hours in 2013 & girls 4.9 hours– stone-crushing – tough, unpopular work; girls increasingly
excluded – rise in cobble carving – cooperatives employ those over
18, younger boys & girls self-employed - popular work• Mesih’s mother: ‘In the past, there was nothing called a job.
Now all girls & boys do some kind of work…they are hired in farming as daily labourers to do weeding … while boys can get a job in crushing stones. Now our village has been changed so it’s good for children at any time...’
• Desta’s mother: ‘Yes it is a profession. Look at this great stone, he crushes and then shapes it ... This is great skill … It may help him for building houses … he is now professional in crushing and shaping stones.’
• Gender & location impact time use among 12-year-olds, but gender disparities are far greater when these two factors are combined
• We do not find a systematic bias against adolescent girls in either education or work burden
• An overall decline in the time spent at work between 2006 & 2013 does not apply to rural boys
• Boys’ educational aspirations are declining & boys are more likely than girls to fall behind at school &/or leave early
• Elevated education aspirations do not detract from children’s work responsibilities in rural areas
• Gendered roles, responsibilities & time use are not fixed
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS
• Expanded income-generating opportunities change incentive structures around adolescents’ time use
• The opportunity costs of schooling are higher for boys & they are distrustful of schooling as a guarantee of future employment & social mobility
• Adolescence is a period of considerable responsibility for both boys and girls
• Government education policy risks being undermined unless the fit with employment is greatly improved
conclusion
www.younglives.org.uk @YLOxford• methodology and research papers• child profiles and photos• e-newsletter• datasets (UK Data Archive)
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