WUNRN
Engendering Empowerment: Education
& Equality
UNGEI - United Nations Girls'
Education Initiative
Situation Analysis: Partnership, Participation and Power
for Gender Equality in Education
Elaine Unterhalter
This situation analysis explores issues around the work of many different partnerships which aim to combat gender inequality in education. It asks what was difficult, or overlooked, in the decade just passed, and uses the lessons learnt to point to ways in which inadequate attention to the pervasiveness of unequal power has meant that the important partnerships established cannot yet fully reach their potential. Gender inequities are contextualised within the complex web of global inequalities associated with the harshness of the present moment, marked by poverty, conflict, and the threats associated climate change and economic recession.The need for the expansion of provision of education for girls and women as a means to challenge discrimination and injustice was given great prominence in the Beijing Platform for Action of 1995. This paper further grounds its analysis in the subsequent aspirations of the gender-related Education for All goals, the second Millennium Development Goal to achieve universal primary education, and the third Millennium Development Goal which aims to promote gender equality and empower women. These aspirations are framed with reference to the work of partnerships such as the UN Girls’ Education Initiative which were formed to help lead this process. All of this work is placed within the context of improving, but still hugely unequal educational opportunities for women and girls. Two thirds of the 1 billion people worldwide who have had no schooling or left school after less than four years are women and girls. Women make up two thirds of the estimated 776 million adults, aged 15 or over, who have had no schooling.
Many countries have achieved
enormous improvements in gender parity in enrolment and attendance, and
significant achievements in expanding access to schooling have been made, but
there is still much work to be done, and problems persist. Improvements in
enrolments are set alongside the need for addressing intersecting inequalities
associated with wealth, or with rural life, which are shown, amongst others, to
particularly affect girls. There is a need for greater attention to be given to
the impact of violence against girls upon their education, as well as the
challenge to understand the complexity of gendered power in local settings, and
the educational conditions that can support change and provide quality
schooling. Concerns with expanding access are faced with the difficulties of
everyday realities of hunger, unemployment, and lack of adequate conditions for
livelihood or health, but the lack of attention to the connections between family
livelihood, health, and gender equality in government social policy and the
campaigning work of NGOs is an important missed opportunity. Enhancing
different forms of participation is a key opportunity for our partnerships in
the coming decade, whether through gender mainstreaming or including women in
decision making at all levels of policy and practice. There are still major
obstacles in realising rights to education, in education, and through education
for many millions. Working for gender equality, empowerment and women’s rights
through schooling is an enormous, but rewarding, challenge.
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