Post-genocide Rwanda: Women’s socioeconomic recovery

Sammanfattning

This study examines whether women’s socioeconomic recovery differed between regions with higher and lower exposure to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Using individual-level data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) combined with regional data on Gacaca court trials, the study applies a difference-in-differences framework to analyse outcomes related to education, employment, fertility, urban residence and household poverty. Education is the main outcome of interest, with additional analyses examining heterogeneous associations across age cohorts and changes over time through a DiD specification with two post-periods. The results suggest that genocide exposure is associated with lower educational attainment among women in high-exposure regions. This negative association with educational attainment remains statistically significant after controlling for pre-existing regional differences and is strongest among women who were of key schooling age during the genocide. The findings further indicate differences in fertility patterns between high- and low-exposure regions, while the results for employment, urban residence and household poverty are more sensitive across specifications. Overall, the study contributes to the literature on post-conflict recovery by providing suggestive evidence that women’s socioeconomic outcomes may have developed differently across regions with varying levels of genocide exposure.