Edutainment Radio, Women’s Status and Primary School Participation: Evidence from Cambodia

This paper explores the effect of being exposed to education-entertainment (“edutaiment”) gender-related radio information on women’s status and primary school participation. Specifically, I examine one of the most popular radio stations in Cambodia using two identification strategies. The first exploits plausible exogenous variation in over-the-air signal strength between radio transmitters and villages within a district. The second exploits the variation across time and space in exposure. Using individual data, both approaches show that access to both entertaining and educating information about gender issues had a significant impact on behavior by raising the women’s decision-making power within the household and increasing children’s primary school attendance. The impact was found in both poor and rural households confirming that en radio broadcast is an effective way to transmit information in the more marginalized areas. Suggestive evidence shows that the exposure also affected attitudes towards domestic violence and the prevalence of son preference which is a stepping stone towards changing socially constructed gender norms. The effect on investing in children’s human capital is also reflected by higher primary school enrollment three years after exposure.