RIGHTS-EDUCATION: Still No Equal Access for Girls

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Kenneth Blackman

WASHINGTON, Oct 18 1998 (IPS) - The portrait of the smiling girl projected onto a screen was unusual, and not just because of the child’s natural beauty.

“Ayesha is unusual in another respect,” Shanti Conly, of Population Action International (PAI), told reporters at a news briefing. “She goes to school in a society where most girls are unable to do so.”

Ayesha lives in Pakistan, where almost all boys, but fewer than half of the girls go to primary school, according to a new PAI report, ‘Educating Girls: Gender Gaps and Gains’.

Had she been Afghan, Ayesha would have been even more unusual. Afghanistan is the country where the difference in the percentage of boys and girls in school increased the most between 1985 and 1995, according to the report, released here Sunday.

That was before the Taliban regime banned girls from the classroom. “Today Afghanistan would have by far the largest gender gap in education, since there are no girls at all enrolled in school,” says Conly, director of policy research at PAI.

In general, gender disparities in education are very high in 19 of the 132 countries covered in the PAI study, which looks at nations with a population of at least two million. Another 32 countries have moderate gender gaps, while 53 have no gap, and 14 have reverse gaps, i.e. there are more girls than boys in schools.

“More education means better income-earning opportunities and more power and enhanced status in family relationships” which add up to “more options in girls’ future productive and reproductive lives,” PAI President Amy Coen said at the Oct. 16 briefing.

Giving an example of the difference education makes to a girl’s life, Conly noted that “after six or seven years of school, she is much less likely to become a teen mother or live in poverty.”

The report shows there is some correlation between education levels and teenage pregnancy. The 10 countries – all of them in the developed world – with the highest secondary enrolment figures (all above 100) have teenage birthrates of 7 to 35 per 1000.

The 10 nations with the highest teenage birth rates (between 173 and 241 per 1000) – all of which are in Africa – have secondary enrolment rates for girls of less than 20 percent. The worst enrolment rates are in Niger and Chad, where only 4 out of 100 girls go to secondary school, and where there are 219 and 192 births respectively for every 1,000 girls aged 15 to 19, according to the report.

“Our study illustrates the striking relationship between girls’ secondary school enrolment and teen birthrates across countries,” said Coen, but “this relationship is even stronger within countries. “In Togo, for example, girls who have never gone to school are 17 times more likely to bear a child in their teen years as compared to girls with 10 or more years of schooling.”

In the 51 countries that have a significant gender gap, there are 75 million fewer girls than boys in a total school population estimated at 600 million, according to the report.

“If current enrolment rates for boys remain constant,” it forecasts, ” the 1995 gender gap of 75 million in these countries would widen to 127 million fewer girls than boys in 2005, as a result of continuing population growth.”

The study estimates that an additional sum of about 5.8 billion dollars would have had to be spent in 1995 to equalize girls’ and boys’ primary and secondary enrolment in the 51 countries. Assuming constant expenditure per pupil, the cost would increase to 9.5 billion dollars in 2005, it says.

Worldwide, there are 94 girls enrolled in primary school for every 100 girls aged 6 to 11 years, compared to 105 boys for every 100 in the same age group. (The rate may exceed 100 since enrolment figures include children outside the given age group.) At the secondary level (ages 12-17) the enrolment rates are 53 for every 100 girls and, among boys, 63 for every 100.

However, gender disparities vary from region to region. The gap is much greater, and enrolment rates lower in South Asia, the Middle East/North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa, although some countries in these regions registered spectacular gains in the 10- year period.

Yemen had by far the biggest gap: 44 points. Its gross enrolment rates in 1995 were 113 for every 100 boys, and 45 per 100 girls at the primary level, and 36 per100 boys and 8 per 100 girls in secondary schools. (In its computations, the study puts a cap of 105 on its figures so as to limit the discrepancy caused by the fact that scores over 100 include children outside the age group in question.)

Of the 14 countries with more girls than boys in school, Lesotho had the highest reverse gender gap (13 points). This group includes one other African nation, South Africa, and eight Latin American and Caribbean ones – Nicaragua, Argentina, Honduras, Jamaica, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela. The other four countries are Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Mongolia and Portugal.

Barriers to girls’ education include poverty and the fact that some parents feel it makes little economic sense educating their daughters, especially in societies where girls traditionally marry early and leave their families, while others may not want their daughters to come into contact with male teachers or students. Parents also tend to be less inclined to send girls to schools that are far away, while girls education tends to suffer more in political and armed conflicts.

And, in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, more and more unmarried girls are dropping out of school due to pregnancy, partly because school policies often require the expulsion of pregnant girls, according to PAI.

To get more girls in school and keep them there, policymakers should build more schools, especially in rural areas, and provide special facilities for girls, where appropriate, PAI recommends in its report.

They should also recruit more female teachers, lower the cost to families of educating girls, educate parents about the importance of sending girls to school, improve the quality and relevance of education, and prevent teen pregnancies by providing sexual health education and services, and encourage teen mothers to stay in school, PAI suggested.