Devising strategies to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of providing universal access to education for girls is complicated by the unreliability of data. The complex gender dynamics involved in education cannot be readily judged through simple measures based on inputs and outputs. Current measurement difficulties make it hard to determine which countries or regions are improving gender equity in education and where additional resources need to be applied.

A paper from the Beyond Access Project (a joint initiative of Oxfam GB and the University of London’s Institute of Education) explores new ways of measuring progress towards gender equality within Education for All (EFA). Case studies are used to derive a ‘scorecard’ ranking the progress of African Commonwealth states. The authors hope the novel methodology employed could be used by the wide range of stakeholders and women’s organisations working across the developing world to improve the number of girls who enroll and stay in education.

The scorecard looks at the numbers of girls who attend and remain in primary school. It also considers whether those girls are able to translate attendance and retention into future schooling at a secondary level and whether they go on to lead healthy lives and earn a reasonable income. Top performers on the scorecard are Botswana, Namibia, Mauritius and South Africa and the low performers include Mozambique, Nigeria and Cameroon.

Countries with high levels of women’s activism or concerns with gender equality, even if outside education, like Uganda, Namibia, and South Africa, score higher than countries where there has been minimal mobilisation on these issues or where the mobilisation has been sporadic and mainly imposed from a national level. Nations with serious regional inequalities (Kenya, Ghana, and Nigeria) score considerably lower than others.

Scorecard rankings suggest a number of features outside the education system that affect initiatives to enhance girls’ access to and retention in schooling. These are peace and democratic governance, a thriving women’s movement and/or concern with gender equity and a well-supported public schooling system committed to tackling inequalities and integration of public policies on education, health and economic development.

Four case studies describe local education initiatives redressing gender equality:

• Botswana’s imaginative Diphalana initiative is encouraging previously stigmatised pregnant schoolgirls to continue schooling: distance education modules are provided during maternity leave and when they return to school, their babies go to crèches which they visit during breaks in order to breast-feed and learn parenting skills.
• In Kenya’s Wajir district, Islamic objections to female education have been overcome by determined parents who built and maintained a girls’ school, the only single sex school in Wajir: a dormitory enables girls to gain qualifications despite their parents’ pastoral lifestyles.
• In the Mukono district of Uganda, those parents able to pay for school fees and meals place a high value on female education, either because they have themselves acquired some education or anticipate formal sector employment if their daughters gain qualifications.
• Efforts to curb sexual violence in South African schools are tackling gender equity issues which faltered due to lack of dialogue between women activists and policy-makers in the early post-apartheid years.

The case studies show that:

• Assessing progress on gender equality and empowerment in education must take account of local diversity and be publicly accountable.
• Private anxieties of families with regard to marriage, puberty and sexuality cannot be ignored.
• Opportunities for dialogue, debate and the exploration of differences must be identified and pursued.

Source(s):
‘Scaling up girls’ education: towards a scorecard on girls’ education in the Commonwealth’ the Commonwealth Secretariat by Elaine Unterhalter, Emily Kioko-Echessa. Rob Pattman, Rajee Rajagopalan and Fatmatta N’Jai 2004 Full document.

Funded by: The Commonwealth Secretariat and DFID

id21 Research Highlight: 31 October 2004

Further Information:
Chloe Challender or Elaine Unterhalter
Beyond Access: Gender, Education and Development
School of Educational Foundations and Policy Studies
Institute of Education
20 Bedford Way
London WC1 0AL
UK

Tel: +44 (0) 20 7612 6394
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7612 6366
Contact the contributor: c.challender@ioe.ac.uk

Institute of Education, University of London

Contact the contributor: E.Unterhalter@ioe.ac.uk

Other related links:
'Progress to gender equality in education'

'Counting gender equality in education - not as easy as 1, 2, 3'

'Better lives for women: are the Millennium Development Goals leading us to it?'

'Closing gender gaps in education: lessons from good practice'

'About MDG 3: Promoting gender equality and empowering women' from Development Goals

'Millenium Project Task Force Three' from the United Nations