Women, medieval commerce, and the education gender gap

•We investigate the determinants of the education gender gap in Italy in the late 19th century.•Female primary school enrollment, relative to that of males, is positively associated with medieval commerce.•We control for alternative long-term geographic, economic, political, and cultural factors.•We discuss mechanisms for long term persistence. We investigate the historical determinants of the education gender gap in Italy in the late 19th century, immediately following the country's Unification. We use a comprehensive newly-assembled database including 69 provinces over 20-year sub-samples covering the 1861–1901 period. We find robust evidence that in 1861, at Unification, gender equality in education is still positively associated with the medieval pattern of commerce, along the routes that connected Italian cities among themselves and with the rest of the world. The beneficial effect of medieval commerce on female education relative to male persists after we control for a broad set of confounding factors reflecting the geographic, economic, political, and cultural differentiation of medieval Italy. The long-term influence of medieval commerce dissipates only gradually after nationally-directed educational policies are implemented after Unification. This is consistent with the hypothesis that its transmission occurs through slow-changing cultural beliefs, as confirmed by further suggestive evidence of its influence on contemporary outcomes related to gender and family culture.