Creating Cultural Capital: The Education of Jewish Females at the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) School for Girls in the City of Tunis, 1882–1914

Based on rarely viewed images from the fin de siècle, this article will contribute to the burgeoning field of Jewish women in the world of Islam. At the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) School for Girls in the city of Tunis, 1882–1914, after a seven-year course of study, Jewish and non-Jewish girls acquired certification of their academic or vocational skills through a certificate or diploma of couture. Such credentials, according to Bourdieu (1986), constitute “cultural capital.” Furthermore, “cultural capital … is convertible … into economic capital and may be institutionalized in the forms of educational qualifications.” A young woman could create cultural capital and transform it into economic capital through employment. Reading the sources, the influence of the Tunisian Muslim woman on the Jewess becomes apparent. Moreover, cultural capital could afford the Jewish female wage earner increased economic independence and social mobility, as she journeyed on the road to modernity.

The plight of female agricultural wageworkers in Morocco during the COVID-19 pandemic

While vaccination campaigns against COVID-19 were launched worldwide, a drama has been unfolding in the Moroccan countryside. It has been marked, over the last couple of decades, by rapid agrarian transformation, manifestations of which have included expanding irrigation frontiers and the increasing growth of high-value crops. These dynamics rely strongly on female agricultural wageworkers. Although they earn low wages, their income is crucial and is used to care for loved ones by paying for school fees, rent, electricity, and medicines. These workers, therefore, cannot afford to quit their jobs. However, most female wageworkers in Morocco are employed without a contract or social security cover. While working in an informal environment and living already in a precarious situation, little is known about how the pandemic has affected them. In this article, we seek to supply some of this information by drawing on the authors’ commitment over almost a decade of covering female wage-workers’ experiences in different agricultural regions in Morocco. Additionally, since March 2020, we have conducted 30 phone interviews with female laborers and farmers in the Saiss and in the coastal area of the Gharb and Loukkos. Using the pandemic as a focus, our results illustrate the inherent contradictions upon which Morocco’s agricultural boom has been founded. Although many female laborers are de facto heads of household or contribute in fundamental ways to the household income, they continue to be considered as secondary earners or as housewives, leading to low structural wages. Moreover, these women assume the prime responsibility for all domestic tasks, which are not economically recognized or valued. Consequently, they face new challenges in addition to their already precarious situations. Reduced work opportunities and limited state support have led to financial and psychological hardship which jeopardize their own and their family’s survival.

Gender wage gap and its effect on test scores of immigrant students

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how gender equality influences difference in cognitive skills between genders. For the closer examination of Guiso et al. (2008), restricting the sample to immigrants allows us to reduce the possibility of reverse causality. Design/methodology/approach Using PISA 2012 matched with the gender wage gap sourced from World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Index 2011, the author compares the effect of the wage gap among the areas of mathematics, science and reading. Findings Decreased gender wage gap leads to girls exhibiting a reduced incidence of lateness and skipping school compared with boys, which in turn improves girls’ test scores in mathematics, science and reading. The direct effect of the decreased wage gap on test scores exceeds its indirect effect on performance owing to influencing school attendance. Originality/value The findings of this paper provide evidence that higher female wage level relative to male wage level incentivizes female students to attend school, resulting in their achieving higher test scores not only for mathematics, but also for science and reading.

The Effects on the Labor Market

The chapter offers a new explanation for the “great conundrum,” or why population growth accelerated in England in the second half of the eighteenth century while growth in literacy and human capital stagnated. Reviewing various attempts to reconcile this anomaly, the authors discuss (a) the switch from the post–Black Death labor scarcity to a labor surplus, which harmed the economic position of women; and (b) changes in the structure of agriculture, which led to the rise of large-scale, capital-intensive and labor-extensive farms with limited demand for female wage labor. Moreover, the decline in wages had important effects on England’s demographic development, reflected in a decline in the average age of marriage between 1600 and 1800 and an increase in fertility. As a consequence, the authors link the “great conundrum” to the changing position of women in the labor market and within marriage.