EDUCATION: UNESCO Conference Highlights Gender Perspective

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Abraham Lama

HAMBURG, Germany, Jul 18 1997 (IPS) - The question of gender must be a key point on national agendas for educational reforms, concluded the Fifth International Conference on Adult Education, which ended here Friday.

“Talk about adult education from a gender perspective is not limited to reducing illiteracy among women,” said Rosa Alfaro, a Peruvian delegate to the conference, sponsored by UNESCO (U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation).

The gender gap in adult literacy rates in Latin America and the Caribbean is small compared to regions such as Africa and Asia.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, 87.7 percent of men and 85.5 percent of women know how to read and write. But the gap is larger in countries like Bolivia (a 14.5 percent difference), Guatemala (13.9 percent) and Peru (11.5 percent).

Reforms must also aim at empowering women and enhancing their participation in decision-making processes to allow them to tackle gender-related problems that stand in the way of their development, underlined Carolyn Medel from the Philippines.

According to social researcher Sara Lonwe, traditional education tends to perpetuate “patriarchal” principles and to induce women to accept masculine domination as natural.

Women activists are pressing for educational curricula and study plans to be reviewed and reformulated, to discover and uproot messages that reinforce patriarchal stereotypes.

“The education ministries of Argentina and Chile have allowed the creation of commissions to study educational materials from a gender perspective,” said Alicia Canaple with the Uruguay-based Network of Popular Education among Women.

Participants at the conference underlined the key role women play today as the heads of single-parent households.

The conference’s final document states that “adult education policies should give priority to broadening educational opportunities for women, and to eliminating prejudices and stereotypes that limit their access to adult education and the resultant benefits.

“Women have the right to equal opportunities. At the same time, society depends on their full contribution in all fields of work and all walks of life.”

But debates arise when it comes to converting the document’s general directives into concrete guidelines for action. While some sectors view empowerment from a purely economic and individual angle, a more radical sector of the women’s movement wants educational reforms to promote sufficient political mobilisation and organisation to allow women to take over decision-making processes, which are still overwhelmingly in the hands of men.