the 110 million children out of school in developing nations,
sixty per cent are girls. According to the United Nations, which
is launching a ten-year Girls Education Initiative at the World
Education Forum, girls are systematically more disadvantaged
than boys solely on the basis of discrimination by gender.
Despite the fact that 44 million more girls attend primary schools
in developing countries than in 1990, and despite the fact that
the education of girls and women is now on policy-making agendas
in most developing nations, the gender gap is still unacceptably
wide. “Girl’s education makes all the difference, not only in
terms of economic development but human development,” says Mary
Joy Pigozzi of UNICEF. What, then, explains such discrimination,
when all indicators show that girls’ schooling is a proven effective
investment for society. Perhaps the fact that individual families
do not always see it as an immediate benefit. “Policy-makers
should recognize the costs and benefits from the parents’ perspective,”
suggests a recent World Bank discussion paper. “If parents incur
greater costs to educate girls but society reaps greater gains,
then governments ought to consider special measures and targeted
subsidies to help girls attend school.”
governments now realize this. Southern Egypt’s 200 girl-friendly
community schools are a shining example. The Egyptian government
is now integrating their best practices – active learning and
child-centred class management – into the formal education system.
Malawi has cut the costs of schooling for parents by eliminating
school fees and abolishing compulsory uniforms. In Mashan County
in China, villages and households that take effective measures
to send girls to school are awarded priority for loans or development
funds. Even a simple measure like building separate toilets
for girls is sometimes enough to keep them in school.
and South Asian countries especially have a long way to go to
close the gender gap. An average six-year-old girl in South
Asia can expect to spend six years in school—three years less
than a boy the same age. And when gender disparities meet urban/rural
disparities, girls lose out even more. A girl based in a rural
area runs three times the risk of dropping out of school than
a city boy. Discrimination is reinforced in the classroom, as
research shows that both male and female teachers tend to give
more attention to boys, a trend now being tackled by gender-sensitive
beliefs and practices are often at the root of the gender gap.
Girls may be expected to help look after home and siblings and
be forced to marry young, or else their parents lack trust in
the education system. One of the reasons parents lack trust
is the threat of sexual harassment by male pupils or even teachers.
The onset of puberty, which can occur as early as ten, is a
crucial time. In many societies, parents who willingly send
their daughter to school remove her at puberty, for fear of
an unwanted pregnancy, and marry her off early instead.
“Education is the right of every child, even the girl who
becomes pregnant,” says Eddah Gachukia of the Forum for African
Women Educationalists (FAWE) who has successfully lobbied
against national policies in Africa that deny schooling to
Multiple Benefits of Girls’ Education
infant and maternal mortality rates
nourished and healthier children and families
opportunities and life choices for women (including
better chances to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS)
Benin now offers basic education opportunities to girls who
drop out from school. Guinea has raised the marriage age and
made it an offence for male teachers to harass female pupils.
A promising initiative in Tanzania helps girls speak out about
their problems and find solutions to overcome obstacles to their
own social and academic development.
“You can’t dissociate the education of girls and the education
of women,” claims Aicha Bah Diallo of UNESCO, who underlines
the necessity of reaching both girls and their mothers in
the same initiative.
This dual approach was successful in the Kayes project in rural
Mali, where an imaginative community-based campaign used riddles,
rhymes and the radio to change long-held attitudes to girls
and women. Once the village women were involved in literacy
and income-generating activities, they supported the movement
to educate girls. They made daily visits to the homes of absent
daughters and marched them off to school if the parents had
no good excuse! In three years, school enrolment in eighteen
villages doubled to 44 per cent, and girls’ enrolment rose from
18 per cent to over 33 per cent – well beyond the original goals.
I am somebody; before, I felt like nobody,"
is how Namibian women expressed their feelings after attending
“Now I am somebody; before, I felt like nobody,” is how women
interviewed in northern Namibia expressed their feelings after
attending literacy classes. The empowerment which literacy brings
is the key to a better life. It is well known that an educated
woman has fewer and healthier children, and is more likely to
send her children to school. In Brazil, for instance, illiterate
women have an average of 6.5 children, whereas those with secondary
education have 2.5 children. The child of a Zambian mother with
a primary education has a 25 per cent better chance of survival
than a child of a mother with no education. Literacy also gives
women a voice. In Bangladesh, women with a secondary education
are three times more likely to attend a political meeting than
are women with no education. after attending literacy classes.
|Micro-credit schemes modelled on the Grameen Bank have
literally revolutionized the lives of thousands of poor rural
women. Bangladeshi women participating in the UNESCO/Grameen
Bank Life-oriented Education Programme decide themselves what
training they require, from accountancy, legal matters to health
and family life. Ownership is a vital element of such programmes.
When a group of fisherwomen in Benin decided they needed numeracy
before literacy, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization adapted
educational material using symbols insteads of words to describe
goods and services.
Many non-governmental organizations promote women’s issues
and gender sensitivity. Associations of University Women from
Nepal to New Zealand run initiatives to provide educational
opportunities for teenage mothers, demystify economics or provide
training in mediation skills to reduce domestic violence.
Finally, female leadership is an emerging theme in education.
The Women’s Institute in Chile promotes educational activities
to enable women to take an active public role and to deal with
social and political issues. A far cry from literacy classes
in a rural village, or is it? The principle is the same: empowerment,
Means Boys Too
it true that “parents look after girls more” in the
Caribbean, as 16-year-old Sebastian Brizan, from Trinidad
and Tobago, complains? Unlike elsewhere in the develop-ing
world, boys in the Caribbean do significantly worse
than girls at school.
Since the 1970s, women in the
Caribbean have taken greater advantage of education.
As a result, they have been demonstrating higher levels
of achievement. Among the trends are equal opportunities
at preschool, primary and secondary education; enrolment
in favour of females in the Bahamas and St Lucia;
better performance of girls than boys in school on
average and more females passing the secondary school
But if “gender-sensitive” means a concern
for equality for boys too, rigid ideas about gender
roles are going to need addressing. So is the low
proportion of male teach-ers in the region, especially
in Jamaica. “It’s not popular to be male and studious,”
remarks a teacher from Barba-dos. “It’s not macho.”
In the Caribbean, as elsewhere, there is a need to
make the education system more gender-sensitive –
ready to tackle obstacles to progress at school for
girls and boys alike.