Natural experiments in culture and gender roles: Evidence on spillovers and gender equality promotion

Examining characteristics of traditional nomadic herding cultures and traditional sedentary farming cultures, both of which are deeply established in Central Asian history, this paper provides evidence on the persistence of gender roles in culture, spillovers from one culture to another, and the impacts of efforts promoting gender equality. First, I investigate whether differences in gender roles and attitudes associated with traditional sedentary farming and nomadic herding cultures persist after decades of Soviet rule. Results indicate that greater gender inequality exists today amongst individuals from traditional sedentary farming cultures (in contrast to traditional nomadic herding cultures). Women of traditional herding cultures are less likely to be in time-intensive home production activities – such as water collection – that prevent them from joining the labor market, more likely to have higher education, and spend approximately an hour more per day on average working in potentially income generating activities. They are also less likely to believe that it is acceptable for a husband to hit his wife. Given that these cultural differences persist through the duration of the Soviet Union, we investigate the extent to which there are spillovers from one culture to another. We use a natural experiment resulting from a series of events during the Soviet rule of Central Asia that exogenously determined district-level cultural composition in Kyrgyzstan to measure spillovers from the traditional sedentary farming culture on the nomadic herding culture. Controlling for a woman’s own culture and a district’s overall diversity, I find evidence of significant cultural spillovers on gender roles and beliefs regarding domestic violence. Finally, I use a unique historical intervention – the construction of Soviet irrigation infrastructure, which was accompanied by intense messages of female empowerment to investigate the extent to which differential exposure to messages of gender equality can impact these same outcomes. Initial results indicate that more intensive exposure to the promotion of gender equality does not have an impact on gender roles and views regarding domestic violence; however, evidence of heterogeneous impacts exist. Exposure to the intensive treatments impacted views on domestic violence significantly more amongst the traditional nomadic herding culture.