WUNRN
"...Three-quarters
of girls who are not attending school around the world are members of groups
that are socially marginal or excluded in the country where they live."
CASE STUDIES FROM THE DEVELOPING WORLD
Marlaine E. Lockheed and Maureen A. Lewis, eds., Center
For Global Development 2007 c. 230pp.
No
one disagrees that girls ought to go to school—for their own sake and because
educating girls ensures a better future for their children and their societies.
And in fact, in the last two decades girls' enrollment rates in developing
countries, especially in primary schooling, have increased dramatically.
But
there are limits to the standard approaches (building more schools, training
more teachers, providing essential learning materials) to achieving near-universal
education, and millions of girls are still not in school.
In
some countries primary school enrollment among girls who are members of
excluded groups—social "minorities"—is below 50 percent.
In
2006, the Center for Global Development published Inexcusable Absence: Why 60
Million Girls Still Aren't In School and What to Do About It, a book by CGD
visiting fellows Maureen Lewis and Marlaine Lockheed, which illuminates this
simple but stunning fact: three-quarters of girls who are not attending school
around the world are members of groups that are socially marginal or excluded
in the country where they live. That book set out practical approaches to
address the problem, including cash grants to families to increase the demand
for schooling in social groups where demand is low, anti-discrimination
programs, and special efforts to improve the quality and outreach of schools in
marginalized communities.
This
new book, edited by Lewis and Lockheed, includes the more detailed technical
analysis and the country case studies on which much of Inexcusable Absence is
based. The technical analysis addresses the role of ethnic and linguistic
heterogeneity in explaining differences across countries in school enrollment.
Case studies cover heterogeneous countries—Laos (Hmong Hill Tribes), China
(ethnic minorities), Pakistan (Balouchi and other isolated tribes in outlying
provinces), India (scheduled castes and scheduled tribes), and Guatemala
(indigenous groups)—where girls from minority groups are especially disadvantaged;
and homogeneous countries—Bangladesh and Tunisia—where girls are on a par with
boys, and where both NGO and government programs have successfully changed
attitudes and behavior surrounding girls' education with the result that both
countries have reached parity in education.
Marlaine
E. Lockheed is a visiting fellow at the Center for Global Development and a
lecturer in public and international affairs at Princeton University. She
previously served as acting director for education at the World Bank, where she
also oversaw education strategy and lending in the Middle East and North
Africa.
Maureen
A. Lewis is the acting chief economist for Human Development at the World Bank
and a nonresident fellow at the Center for Global Development. She formerly
managed a unit in the Bank dedicated to economic policy and human development
research and programs in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
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