At Jomtien in 1990, and at Dakar a decade later, educationalists resolved to attack gender inequality in education. Are we on track to achieve the Dakar Forum’s pledge to ensure all girls have access to and complete, free and compulsory primary education of good quality by 2015? Are obstacles to the participation of women and girls in education falling fast enough?

A report from UNESCO, part of the agency’s commitment to the UN Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI), reviews and analyses progress made in girls’ education, and gender parity in basic education, since Jomtien. Global trends are set out, together with country statistical profiles for 52 developing nations singled out by UNGEI because of their critical situation in terms of overall enrolment in primary education and/or gender gaps.

UNESCO warns that data provided by national education authorities is often limited, incomplete and not always broken down by gender or up-to-date. It is clear, however, that most governments are taking measures to encourage girls’ access to and participation in, schooling. The study welcomes the progressive girl-specific initiatives outlined in many countries’ Education for All 2000 Assessments.

UNESCO notes that:

• While the gender gap in youth illiteracy is narrowing, two thirds of the world’s 875 million illiterate people are women: this proportion has remained unchanged since 1990.
• Although some of the starkest inequity is being tackled, intake rates for primary education in many developing countries remain lower for girls: it is often poverty, rather than simply social and cultural attitudes, that keeps girls from entering school.
• With the exception of those states where girls now constitute the majority of primary pupils, girls are likely to spend a shorter time in school than boys
• While the proportion of female teachers has globally increased, women in many sub-Saharan African states represent less than a quarter of the teaching force.
• The Arab world has made substantial progress towards gender parity in the teaching profession: in three quarters of Arab states over half the teachers are women.
• While in general more boys have to repeat school years than girls, in those countries with high gender disparities in favour of boys the majority of those forced to repeat are girls.

UNESCO warns that it is unrealistic to expect that the Dakar objective of “eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education” by 2005 will be achieved in all countries.

However it recommends that education planners:

• consider gender disparities in education in the wider context of socio-economic, urban/rural and ethnic inequalities
• realise that once girls get a foothold they perform as well as, if not better than, boys: the priority must be to make it easier for them to go to school in the first place
• support strong innovative policies to get education systems in Central and West Africa, Afghanistan, Yemen and Cambodia moving faster towards equality
• appreciate that continuing the practice of sending young people with incomplete secondary education or teaching experience into classrooms to teach will lead to a deterioration in the quality of education
• promote further development of accurate gender-sensitive statistics and indicators
• support providers of non-formal education who are working towards EFA goals.

Source(s):
‘The challenge of achieving gender parity in basic education: a statistical review, 1990-1998’ by Vittoria Cavicchioni, UNESCO, 2002 Full document.

Funded by: UNESCO

id21 Research Highlight: 7 April 2004

Further Information:
Vittoria Cavicchioni
23, rue Auguste Vitu
75015 Paris
France

Tel: +33 (0) 1 45 75 04 37
Contact the contributor: cavicchioni@wanadoo.fr

Other related links:
'Saving Women's Lives: Educating Girls'

'The missing 65 million: getting girls into school'

'Educating girls: Changing lives for generations'

'Aiming high: how can women climb the academic and occupational ladders?'

'Class struggles: the challenges of achieving schooling for all' Insights Education #2

'Girls' Education in Developing Countries: Mind the Gap'