Balancing school and work with new opportunities: changes in children’s gendered time use in Ethiopia (2006–2013)

Abstract

We explore the temporal dimension of childhood, through time use of boys and girls in Ethiopia, focusing on the relationship between children’s work and school attendance. We argue that children’s time use reflects both current exigencies and more strategic future-orientated considerations, with work mainly serving the former, and education, the latter. We compare two cohorts of children aged 12 years from Young Lives longitudinal study, interviewed at two different points in time, 2006 and 2013. We examine the role of education aspirations, labour demand and structural factors such as household wealth and composition. Contrary to expectations, increased returns to work in rural areas have lowered boys’ education aspirations and increased their school drop-out rates relative to girls’. Though time allocation is correlated with educational aspirations, we demonstrate that aspirations are not static, and change over childhood; locality and everyday exigencies interact with gender in reshaping children’s aspirations and time-use.