Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

This research assesses how the policies resulting from Millennium Development Goal 3 generated positive change in the intersection of education and gender. Goal 3 aims to promote women’s empowerment and gender equality, using gender parity in education as the main target. This focus on education has been criticized for ignoring broader gender-based discrimination, neglecting other important issues related to gender and equality. The Goals overall have been criticized for their poor measurement of educational outcomes, with a primary focus on enrolment.

With the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) deadline now passed, this work addresses these criticisms by evaluating outcomes for gender and education in sub-Saharan Africa, the region with some of the worst outcomes for women’s education at the start of the MDGs. It first evaluates success according to the main indicator, gender parity in education. It also evaluates spillover effects into other issue areas relating to gender equality and women’s empowerment. These issues include rights, legal protections, and gender-based violence. The study uses the MDGs as a treatment in a natural experiment, testing effectiveness by comparing pre-treatment with post-treatment outcomes. It is based on a panel data model from 1990 to 2013, testing for a structural break in the model at the years 2000, 2005, and 2010. The initial test is in reaction to the MDG start date and later tests are to account for time lag in implementing and enacting related policies. Broadly, this testing can show the usefulness of MDG 3’s gender parity in education indicator when measuring progress towards the overarching goal. Results are interpreted in light of the MDG’s successor the Sustainable Development Goals, which takes a different stance on achieving gender equality and the role for education in achieving that goal.