WUNRN
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Just 27 percent of the country’s 200,000 students enrolled
in higher education are female |
SANAA, 6 September 2007
(IRIN) - Aisha Al-Gilany remembers the struggle all too well. For four years
she fought with her parents to allow her to attend university.
“My sisters all went to grade five and then dropped
out,” recalled the 23-year-old from Al-Fars Rajam village, two hours outside
Sanaa, the capital.
“My parents didn’t approve of us going,” she explained,
adjusting the black chador covering her face. She adheres strictly to the
conservative norms that govern most Muslim women in this part of the world.
Though her parents wanted their five daughters to be
literate, female education was never deemed particularly important in her
village. “Women in Yemen are supposed to stay at home and clean,” Aisha said.
“Why should girls go to school?” asked 57-year-old
Ahmed, a local shopkeeper.
“OK, they can go, but the priority should always be on
the men,” a slightly more open-minded young man said. In Yemen, such comments
are far from new, particularly in rural areas where the vast majority of the
population lives.
Gender gap
The government says the gender gap with regard to
education is “considerable”. While national illiteracy rates stand at about 30
percent for men, they exceed 67 percent for women, it says.
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says access to education
is one of the biggest challenges facing children in Yemen today, especially
girls. Nearly half of primary school age girls do not go to school.
According to the most recent Arab Human Development
Report (AHDR), the gender gap in education in Yemen is among the highest in the
world. Girls’ education is a highly gender-sensitive issue, the 2005 report
said, citing cultural factors like gender specific roles, early marriage,
segregation between the sexes, and poverty as the primary barriers.
The gender-disparity in Yemen is the worst in the world.
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This results in gender
inequality in education, with human development indicators for female literacy
and the net enrolment ratio for females amongst the lowest worldwide, it said.
In addition to the gender gap in education, urban-rural
differences were significant: 84.8 percent of urban and 68.9 percent of rural
males aged 10 and above are literate, compared to only 59.5 percent of urban
and 24 percent of rural females, respectively, the National Document to Promote
Girls’ Education in Yemen, said in 2005.
UNDP reports that in Yemen, in primary education,
females account for just 52.8 percent of the number of males that are enrolled,
and in secondary education 35.3 percent of males that are enrolled - making
female enrolment rates in Yemen amongst the lowest in the Arab world.
Socio-cultural versus economic factors
“The gender-disparity in Yemen is the worst in the
world,” Dr Arwa Yahya Al-Deram, executive director of Soul, a local
non-governmental organisation (NGO) currently working to promote female
enrolment in two of the country’s 19 governorates, told IRIN in Sanaa.
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For women in Yemen, receiving an education can prove a
formidable challenge |
Low female participation
in education was attributed to several socio-cultural factors, she said: the
tradition of early marriage in rural areas hindered girls’ schooling and
resulted in high drop out rates; the high importance of a girl’s chastity in
rural areas; the reluctance of many parents to send girls to mixed gender
schools; and the negative social attitudes towards girls’ education.
Al-Deram, however, placed more emphasis on the economic
factors than on people’s perceptions of education, saying that attitudes were
not as bad as people thought. She said available financial resources were a
crucial determinant of a parent’s decision on their daughter’s education, as
was the local availability of schools.
“We don’t have enough schools just for girls,” she said.
“The classes are mixed, and that’s not acceptable in Yemeni culture,” Al-Deram
said.
“Non-availability of female teachers is a major factor
often cited by parents for keeping girls away from school,” Nasim-ur-Rehman, a
UNICEF spokesman in Sanaa said. Even if the schools exist, they often lacked
basic amenities like a toilet, he added.
Comparison with other Arab countries
The AHDR, sponsored by the UN Development Programme
(UNDP), said significant differences exist between Arab countries in giving
women access to education.
Non-availability of female teachers is a major factor often
cited by parents for keeping girls away from school.
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School enrolment rates for girls in several Arab
oil-producing countries and in Jordan, Lebanon, the occupied Palestinian
territory and Tunisia are, in fact, higher than for boys, the report says,
while the highest relative rate of deprivation of education occurs in those
Arab countries with the largest populations, such as Egypt, Morocco and Sudan,
and the least-developed ones, such as Djibouti and Yemen.
After years of persistence, Aisha’s parents finally gave
in to her dream, but to this day her brothers refuse to speak to her. “They
think I have brought shame onto the family, as well as the community,” she
said.
Yet, for Aisha, now a second year physics student at
Sanaa University, that does not matter. “It’s OK that they aren’t speaking to
me,” she smiled. “Time will heal this and by then I will be an educated woman.”
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