More and more girls are now enrolling in schools worldwide, but gender equity goals cannot be reached simply by building schools and ensuring female access to them. Policymaking must become more transparent and inclusive to ensure that enough resources are allocated for girls’ education.

A handbook from the Commonwealth Secretariat examines political and ideological gender issues within education systems. The author argues for the need to pay attention to the formulation and implementation of policies, and the need to identify the biases that determine how ideas are translated into action and resources are allocated.

Gender in education must address strategic connections between education and wider development, as well as the changing relationships between men and women. Transfers of poverty from one generation to another are not disrupted by the currently-fashionable Sector Wide Approaches (SWAps), which look at the education sector in isolation. It is unfortunate that many countries’ Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers have received donor agreement despite paying little attention to gender.

In many countries, substantial progress has been made in enrolling equal numbers of girls and boys in schools, especially at primary level. However, where the greater equality has been achieved in access to secondary and higher education, this often reflects class privileges rather than indicating that poorer women are gaining access.

Getting girls into primary school is important. However, it is adolescence which often marks the point at which gender inequalities in education become more noticeable. This is particularly true in countries that are progressing towards gender parity (equal enrolment ratios of boys and girls) in primary education. Secondary schooling is the defining point for determining whether education is really a transforming experience for girls. Much more needs to be done to ensure that girls can progress easily from primary education. Bangladesh is among the countries showing the value of offering incentives to support female secondary schooling through scholarship schemes.

Three main messages emerge from a review of female education:

• Advocacy for education as a whole is essential for sustainable girls’ education. Only good quality, pro-poor and pro-marginalised interventions and system reforms, and schools that function with communities’ active engagement, can provide learning environments to allow girls to complete school.
• Links between education and other investments must be coordinated: such as in nutrition, health, protection from violence and job creation.
• Indicators must be developed to assess progress. The current focus on outcomes that can be measured statistically must be complemented by qualititative indicators of what females are really getting out of education.

There are several ways to boost the demand for girls’ schooling and the quality of schooling and likelihood of completion:

• advocate with communities to raise awareness of female education
• train enough teachers to promote new ways of thinking about gender
• introduce gender sensitive social protection measures to ensure attention to both economic and social factors that push girls out of school
• provide reproductive health services to ensure pregnancies do not prematurely stop girls from going to school in countries where this is a significant problem
• create opportunities for girls and adult women to collectively address commonly-experienced injustices, including attention to gender-based violence within the school and beyond
• provide early childhood care and education programmes and crèche facilities to free young girls from the responsibility of looking after brothers or sisters
• take proactive public action to promote female schooling through incentives that are well-funded and effectively targeted.

Source(s):
‘Gender in Primary and Secondary Education: A Handbook for Policy-makers and Other Stakeholders’, Commonwealth Secretariat: London, by Ramya Subrahmanian, December 2007 Full document.

Funded by: Commonwealth Secretariat

id21 Research Highlight: 5 April 2008

Further Information:
Ramya Subrahmanian  
United Nations Children's Fund
73 Lodi Estate
New Delhi 110 003
India

Contact the contributor: rsubrahmanian@UNICEF.org

United Nations Children's Fund, India

Publications Section
Commonwealth Secretariat
Marlborough House
Pall Mall
London SW1Y 5HX
UK

Tel: +44 20 77476534
Fax: +44 20 78399081
Contact the contributor: publications@commonwealth.int

Publications Section, Commonwealth Secretariat, UK

Other related links:
'Gender equality in higher education in low-income countries'

'Gender bias in education: here to stay?'

'Do literacy programmes for indigenous people ignore gender?'