WUNRN
EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION - MAJOR
GLOBAL CHALLENGES - GENDER EQUALITY ISSUES FOR GIRLS
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Rights from the Start, a new report released by the Global Campaign for Education - 200 million children are still being denied their right to early childhood care & education. The Global Campaign for Education (GCE) has launched a new report, Rights from the Start, as part of a move to highlight the disastrous impact of neglecting early years care and education. The report was written on behalf of GCE by Vernor Muñoz, former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, with contributions from Emeritus Professor Peter Moss of the University of London and Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova. |
Direct Link to Full 40-Page
Publication:
Gender Equality: The implications
of gender equality issues here are clearly multi-faceted. Two however, are par
ticularly noteworthy: firstly, the disparity between the sexes, and secondly,
the femininisation of the pre-primary teaching profession.
The disparity
between the sexes is slightly less pronounced in pre-primary education than at
other levels. Yet in some countries girls continue to face sharp discrimination
in access to pre-primary education – such as in
There are three
regions with countries that historically maintain a high level of services for
children between six to eight years of age, placing them within the acceptable
range for gender parity in primary education: North America and Western Europe,
Central Europe and
Approximately 90%
of the countries located in these regions have reached parity within primary education.
The Latin American and Caribbean, East Asian and Pacific regions have intermediate
rates, in that the percentage of countries within the range for parity have
progressed from 50% to 60% over the last 40 years. However, the most notable
advances in terms of parity between genders took place in regions where in 1970
the number of boys had been significantly greater than the number of girls
attending primary schools: South and West Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and, in particular,
the Arab states 68.
If in fact parity
is high for enrolment in school, it is important to take into consideration
that a greater percentage of boys are enrolled at the official age (six years),
while girls experience an age-grade gap. This leads one to understand why in a
relatively small number of countries (15 of 165) boys are at a disadvantage in
relation to access to the first grade. The most marked inequalities (adjusted
GPI rate greater than 1.06) have been identified in Anguilla, the
