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WHY THIS GOAL?
In
principle men and women are equal – with the same rights and duties.
In practice that is not the case in many situations. Men can earn
more money than women, they can get better jobs, they make more
decisions in family and community, and have more positions of power
in society. In education, more men than women benefit from higher
levels of education, and more boys than girls are in
school.
In some situations, the opposite is true – there are
more girls than boys in education. Almost everywhere girls do better
in school than boys.
However, across the world as a whole, 57
per cent of the children out of school are girls. There are many
reasons why this is so: girls stay at home to do chores or look
after smaller brothers and sisters, they are married and bear
children at a young age, they have to work to earn money for the
family, they are passed over in favour of boys. UP
ITS
IMPORTANCE
The way men and women relate to one another
depends on the community and the society in which they live.
However, the countries of the world together have made a number of
agreements which recognise that men and women should be treated
equally, and that they have equally important contributions to make
to society and to its development.
>> Monitoring Report, 2003/04 -Box
1.1. The ‘gender commitment’ instruments
Education is a way of making sure that girls and boys
have an equal start in life and the chance to grow and develop
according to their potential. This is not the case where girls
cannot go to school, for whatever reasons.
We also know that
educated mothers are more likely to send their girls to school, to
look after the health of their family better, to have smaller
families, and educated women are less exposed to exploitation and
risks such as HIV/AIDS.
Enabling women and men to benefit
equally from what the world has to offer and to contribute equally
to society is a goal that involves much more than education.
However, education must be at the heart of these efforts if the full
potential of humankind is to be unlocked. UP
ITS NATURE
Making
sure that girls get an education is about more than just what
happens at school; it involves:
· tackling social issues such
as child labour, female genital mutilation, early marriage and other
problems that keep girls away from school;
· making sure that
policies do not discriminate against girls and women – in education,
in employment or in gaining access to leadership positions;
·
tipping the balance in favour of girls – by offering scholarships or
school feeding programmes, through making schools girl-friendly with
proper and separate sanitation, by employing more women teachers for
the security of girls and as a role model;
· making the
content of education helpful to girls, for example by including
reproductive health and HIV/AIDS prevention, and by introducing them
to their legal rights. UP
PROGRESS TOWARDS THIS
GOAL
Progress towards gender parity is measured by a
gender parity index (GPI) where a value of 1 indicates parity
between the sexes. The EFA Global Monitoring Report 2003/4 notes
that
· 16 countries (13 of them in sub-Saharan Africa) had a
GPI value in primary education of less than 0.8 to the detriment of
girls;
· 30 countries (17 in sub-Saharan Africa) had the same
value for secondary education.
>> Global Monitoring Report 2003/04 -
Table 2.24. Current situation of countries according to their
distance from achieving the goal of gender parity in primary and
secondary education
In terms
of achieving the 2005 and 2015 targets, the Report indicates, for a
total of 128 countries with data, that
· 52 countries have
achieved or are likely to achieve both targets;
· 22
countries which may miss the 2005 target are nevertheless likely to
achieve the 2015 target;
· 54 countries are not likely to
achieve parity in primary or secondary education or both by 2015. In
25 of these countries, it is boys who are at a disadvantage, not
girls.
>> Global Monitoring Report 2003/04 -
Table 2.25. Gender parity in primary and secondary education:
national prospects for goal achievement in 2005 and 2015
UP
CURRENT
CHALLENGES
The challenges of getting all girls into
school are wide-ranging. They include the following:
·
changing attitudes among the male population so that women and girls
have the same rights and respect as men and boys; awareness of
rights among women also needs to rise because they have often
accepted the dominant view and do not know how to challenge
it;
· raising the status of the social roles women in society
at large – showing that women can and do achieve the same levels of
status, employment and power as men;
· educating mothers as a
way of sustaining the education of girls in the long term;
·
expanding early childhood education, particularly for girls, thus
ensuring that more will enter and benefit from primary
schooling;
· girl-friendly schooling: it is not just a matter
of getting girls into school, but also about making sure that
schools are good places for girls to be – secure, healthy, affirming
and encouraging;
· no stereotypes: when designing textbooks
and other materials, girls and women should not be shown in limited
roles, for instance merely as mothers or providers of food;
·
adolescent education: for girls who dropped out of school or who
never went it is difficult to obtain basic education. There is a
need for targeted initiatives to give these girls, most often in
their adolescent years, the chance they missed. UP
POLICY OPTIONS – WHAT
GOVERNMENTS SHOULD DO
· Legislate to ensure equal rights
before the law; this matters a great deal in areas like marriage law
and inheritance, as well as in employment and the ability to sign
contracts;
· Make sure that all government ministries are
sensitive to gender issues, making equitable decisions in their
appointments and allocation of resources; programmes and plans
should always respect gender equity;
· Take special measures
to encourage girls to attend school where this is necessary –
support for the family income, feeding programmes, more female
teachers, for example;
· Promote programmes of literacy and
basic education among mothers, thus raising the value and importance
of educating their daughters also;
· Train teachers to be
aware of gender issues and to combat gender stereotypes in the
classroom;
· Produce learning materials which portray life
chances and expectations in a fair manner for both girls and boys,
avoiding the stereotypes of women working only as
caregivers;
· Research the need for education for adolescent
girls and design appropriate programmes which enable them to pursue
or re-start their education or find productive work, building
bridges between formal and non-formal education to do so. UP
POLICY OPTIONS – WHAT FUNDING
AGENCIES SHOULD DO
· Support research into the factors in
specific contexts which keep girls from attending school;
·
Support the framing of legislation to improve the rights and
opportunities of women and girls;
· Act as a catalyst for
dialogue between government and communities on gender issues, in
general and as they relate to education;
· Fund the re-design
of textbooks and teaching materials, as well as the re-alignment of
teacher training, in order to reflect more equitable gender
concerns.
· Demonstrate and model equitable gender practices
in their own institutional life and procedures. UP
WHAT UNESCO IS
DOING
In cooperation with national governments and
international agencies UNESCO
· plays an active role in the
UN Girls'Education Initiative ; ensuring that UNESCO’s experiences from work in
girls’ education and gender mainstreaming form part of the strategic
development of UNGEI;
· works to promote an active gender
perspective in the UN Decades for which it is the coordinating
agency, notable The UN Literacy Decade
, and the the UN Decade of Education for
Sustainable Development ;
·
promotes knowledge generation and sharing on policies and practices
related to the achievement of gender parity and gender equality, and
develop policy recommendations. UNESCO Education Primary
Website
· documents good
practices from countries that have successfully ensured access for
girls to primary education, their completion of it and their
transition to secondary education, and disseminates; these lessons
to policy makers. UP
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