Although Mali has made impressive progress in getting more children into school, the gender gap is still wide. In pastoral communities in northern Mali less than a third of girls attend school. Local women are helping to raise girls' enrolments, but schools are failing to challenge assumptions about roles for women and girls.

Oxfam GB reports on the work of animatrices – female community helpers – working against the discrimination that girls experience in the Gao region of north-east Mali. In this remote area of semi-desert many communities move regularly in search of pasture in a region plagued by droughts and locusts.

Parents are often reluctant to allow their daughters to make the long walk to school. This is especially the case when feeding arrangements at school are inadequate: many think that girls need to be especially well fed in order to mature. The practice of early marriage and the assumption that girls and women are intellectually inferior also explain girls’ low enrolment and attendance rates.

Oxfam has tried to work towards achieving gender equality and quality education by developing a flexible approach that aims to increase the number of girls who go to school and stay in school. It also ensures that they acquire relevant and long-term basic skills in mathematics, literacy, health and nutrition.

Animatrices are local women, most of whom have completed six years of primary education. They work with parents, telling them about the importance and value of schooling for both girls and boys. They monitor girls’ attendance and work with teachers to ensure a safe and friendly school environment. When girls drop out of school, the animatrices talk with families to find out the reasons why and try to encourage the girls to return.

The programme has used a rights-based approach which has begun to transform beliefs about schooling for girls. However, the animatrice model has shortcomings:

• The women often have to put up with hostility from male school directors.
• Animatrices have had limited training in gender issues and some hold attitudes which reinforce gender inequalities.
• Their promotion of classrooms that are friendly for girls can lead to increased work loads for the girls: cleaning, fetching water, and washing dishes reinforce stereotypes of women’s work.
• Targeting only women and girls with messages about hygiene and sanitation sends the wrong signal to men and boys.
• Animatrices are not sufficiently addressing questions about the quality or relevance of the education that girls are receiving.

Looking to the future, Oxfam suggests it is important to:

• continue working with teachers, parents, and policymakers to provide more schools and curricula that are safe and relevant for girls
• encourage animatrices to challenge pastoral male-dominated relations and those of wider Malian society
• tackle gender inequalities inside and outside the school and at both local and national levels
• learn more about why parents send girls to school in order to encourage more enrolments
• ensure that gender issues are introduced into national legal frameworks and reflected in decentralisation and education reforms.

Source(s):
‘Pastoralist schools in Mali: gendered roles and curriculum realities’, by Salina Sanou and Sheila Aikman, Chapter Nine, pp181-195, ‘Beyond access: transforming policy and practice for gender equality in education’, Oxfam GB, edited by Sheila Aikman and Elaine Unterhalter, 2005 Full document.

Funded by: Oxfam GB

id21 Research Highlight: 2 March 2007

Further Information:
Salina Cheserem-Sanou
CARE International in Somalia/South Sudan
P.O Box 2039 KNH 00202
Nairobi
Kenya

Tel: +254 20 2807143
Fax: +254 20 2718406
Contact the contributor: sanou@ci.or.ke

CARE International in Somalia/South Sudan

Sheila Aikman
Oxfam GB
Oxfam House
John Smith Drive
Cowley, Oxford OX4 2JY
UK

Tel: +44 (0)1865 473727
Fax: +44 (0)1865 472993
Contact the contributor: saikman@oxfam.org.uk

Oxfam GB

Other related links:
'Beyond the Mainstream: Education for nomadic and pastoralist girls and boys'

'Modernising gender roles and giving women choices in Eritrea'

'Girls’ education in Guinea under the microscope'

'Denying Kenyan girls their right to education'

Programme Insights: Education and Gender series