Asadullah, Mohammad NiazWahhaj, Zaki2025-12-222025-12-222013-12Asadullah, M. N., & Wahhaj, Z. (2013). Going to school in Purdah: Female schooling, mobility norms and madrasas in Bangladesh. BRAC Research and Evaluation Division (RED).http://hdl.handle.net/10361/27352This paper looks at the determinants of secondary school attendance in Bangladesh with a focus on the interaction between community gender norms and relative supply of madrasas (i.e. Islamic schools). We present a theoretical framework where the probability of children’s school participation varies with respect to a non-economic factor – how the community observes social norms regarding female mobility – conditional upon the types of available schools. Household data from the Bangladesh Demographic Health Survey (BDHS) is combined with community information on the availability of non-religious secondary schools and madrasas to test our theoretical predictions. We find that in communities which are more 'progressive', in the sense that women have a relatively high level of mobility, the effect of availability of non-religious school on attendance does not vary by gender. However, in the more ‘conservative communities’, female schooling is more sensitive to the availability of madrasas.enSecondary schoolsGender normsMadrasaFemale schoolingPurdahEducation, Secondary--Bangladesh.Women--Education.Purdah.Islamic religious education.Research Report