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This paper examines whether early maternal employment has any effects on cognitive abilities and educational attainment of children in the long term. Using two stage estimation technique, we found that the early maternal employment has positive effects on mathematics ability, but not on spatial ability. Interestingly, the positive effects of early maternal employment on cognitive abilities only appear in girls, but not in boys. Moreover, the early maternal employment affects positively the children’s educational attainment for both boys and girls. Early maternal employment in Indonesia has no negative effects on children in long term outcomes, but, has positive spillover effects on girls.