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South Asia has the highest number of out-of-school girls in the world.
This paper outlines some of the issues confronting practitioners, policy
makers, and researchers in girls’ education in South Asia, and explores
what they can do to move towards high-quality and gender-equitable
education for all.
This paper considers commonalties and diversities across the region,
and looks at how girls are faring in the education systems. It notes that
while there has been marked progress within the region, and improvements
in most countries, much more effort is needed to reach internationally
agreed targets.
Gender specific issues in education include:
- missing girls and women: there are 50 million fewer women in
South Asia today than there should be. If India succeeds in providing
education for all, it will be impossible to achieve parity of enrolment
in the near future because of these artificial disparities in the
demographic profile. However achieving quality education for all will in
itself be a strong move towards eliminating the societal prejudices
against women
- marriage: despite laws against the practice, child marriage
is common throughout South Asia, and it effectively puts a stop to the
educational progress of many girls
- bodily integrity: the issue of bodily integrity or sexual
harassment becomes more urgent and oppressive the older a girl gets. A
girl runs the risk of being harassed, assaulted, abducted, or even
murdered on the way to or from school, and she is by no means free from
risk within the school. For this reason, many girls are withdrawn from
school when they reach puberty. Girls who live at some distance from the
school are particularly vulnerable; the further they have to travel to
school, the more remote the area, the greater the potential risk
- Nutrition: in many parts of South Asia, women and girls are
expected to eat least and to eat last. Malnutrition of course affects
attentiveness and performance in school. In addition, many children
leave school without learning enough about nutrition, and so traditions
such as not eating ‘rich’ food during menstruation prevail, contributing
to widespread anaemia
- Teachers: it is generally assumed that women teachers provide
good role models for girls in school; they allay parents’ fears of
security issues within the school, and their presence shows that the
teaching profession is a suitable aspiration for girls currently in
school. For some, the proportion of women teachers in the system is an
indicator of progress, and there are fewer women teachers in countries
with high gender disparities.
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