Researchers from the Université Catholique de Louvain use the LOKSTAT database

Annalisa Frigo and Eric Roca investigated the effect of the presence of beguines in certain Belgian municipalities on contemporary gender relations. Read about their findings in the paper or start working with data from the LOKSTAT database yourself.

Article:

Frigo, Annalisa, and Eric Roca. “Roots of gender equality: the persistent effect of beguinages on attitudes toward women”. Labour Seminar Paper, Milan Bocconi University, 2018.

Abstract: 

“This paper is concerned with the historical determinants of gender equality. In the specific context of Belgium, it relates higher levels of gender equality during the 19th century to the presence of medieval, female-only, Belgian communities called beguinages. Combining a novel, hand-collected data-set on beguinage location with 19th-century Belgian census data, we document that in municipalities where beguine communities settled the literacy gap reduced. Schooling was not compulsory and literacy differentials reflect parental tenets on gender equality. Using changes in the political organisation through which some villages became more attractive to beguines, we establish that the variation in gender literacy is indeed related to the presence of beguinages. Our results are in line with the extensive empirical evidence documenting the persistence of gender norms and culture. Finally, we propose a novel class of mechanisms, based on improvements in girls’ bargaining power, to rationalise our findings”