Source:
Isis International-Manila
Earnest M. Zabala
Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education - Target 3: Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.
Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower woman- Target 4: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and to all levels of education no later than 2015.
"By 2005, the number of girls in primary and secondary schools world-wide should be equal to that of boys": this is the target of the third Millennium Development Goal (MDG), an ambitious agenda for reducing poverty and improving lives worldwide. Eight MDGs were set by and agreed upon by 189 states at the UN Millennium Summit held in New York in September 2000. For each goal, one or more targets have been set, most for 2015, using 1990 as a benchmark.
The third MDG seeks to promote gender equality and empower women. As its target, it seeks to "eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education not later than 2015." Tacit within this target is an underlying conviction that poverty cannot be effectively addressed without the success of the above-mentioned education goal. Further, it underscores the importance of women's education in ensuring the success of the project. As stated in the MDG Gender.net website: "Without progress towards gender equality and the empowerment of women, none of the MDGs will be achieved." Today, in the middle of 2005, developments in education reveal that as far as the MDG's goal for gender equality is concerned, the world still has a long way to go.
In its "The State of the World's Children 2004" report, UNESCO states that "the global number of children out of school stubbornly remains undiminished at 121 million - and the majority is still girls;" 65 million girls to be exact. Of this staggering figure, 83 percent of them are found in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and East Asia and the Pacific. The Global Campaign for Education reported that, in Bangladesh, 1.5 million girls are out of school. This, inspite of the fact that Bangladesh is a good example of a country whose government -under pressure from women's groups- has really bitten the political bullet and taken decisive action on gender equity.
While the numbers may seem grim, there are pockets of good news. "State of the World's Children 2004" finds that "nearly two-thirds of developing countries improved on girls' enrollment over the decade, with the biggest improvements seen in Benin, Chad, the Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Nepal, Pakistan and Sudan. In Morocco, the proportion of girls' enrollment in rural areas shot up from 44.6 percent from 1997 to 1998 to 82.2 per cent from 2002 to 2003." But "girls' primary school completion rate still lags way behind boys', at 76 percent compared with 85 percent," the report cautions, which means that "millions more girls than boys are dropping out each year". On the other hand, the Global Education Digest 2005 finds that "although there are signs of progress at primary level, there is still a noticeable gap at secondary level. Overall, gender parity on entry to lower secondary education has been reached in 60 out of 133 countries reporting data. In 46 countries, most of them in Africa and Asia, girls are less likely to enter lower secondary school than boys".Global education digest shows rapid growth in secondary education worldwide (UNESCO).
Critics of the MDG have said that the target goals are over simplistic and too quantitative. The indicators chosen for monitoring reflect only the data which already exist and do not take into account the myriad of differences among countries and cultures. "Though the MDG treats gender equality as an explicit goal, its indicators of progress nonetheless are reduced to mere numbers such as: the ratio of boys and girls at all levels of education; gender disparities in adult literacy; the percentage of women in waged employment in the non-agricultural sector; and the percentage of women holding seats in national parliament".These indicators do not take into consideration other key areas for which there are no international comparable statistics such as the frequency of child-brides or violence against women, which have as much influence on how girls are educated as say, how much budget a government decides to set aside for them.
On the other hand, the Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA) fully recognises the impact of these factors. The BPfA is the final outcome of the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing, China in 1995. In this conference, governments signified their commitment to advance the goals of equality, development and peace for all women around the world by adopting the BPfA.
Section 71 of the BPfA states: "71. Discrimination in girls' access to education persists in many areas, owing to customary attitudes, early marriages and pregnancies, inadequate and gender-biased teaching and educational materials, sexual harassment and lack of adequate and physically and otherwise accessible schooling facilities. Girls undertake heavy domestic work at a very early age. Girls and young women are expected to manage both educational and domestic responsibilities, often resulting in poor scholastic performance and early drop-out from the educational system. This has long-lasting consequences for all aspects of women's lives". More than just increasing the figures and percentages, the BPfA aims for gender parity in accessing education by calling on governments and other relevant sectors to:
1. Create an educational and social environment, in which women and men, girls and boys, are treated equally and encouraged to achieve their full potential, respecting their freedom of thought, conscience, religion and belief, and where educational resources promote non-stereotyped images of women and men;
2. Provide access for and retention of girls and women at all levels of education;
3. Create a gender-sensitive educational system in order to ensure equal educational and training opportunities and full and equal participation of women in educational administration and policy- and decision-making;
4. Develop training programmes and materials for teachers and educators that raise awareness about the status, role and contribution of women and men in the family, as defined [by the BPfA], and society;
5. Provide funding for special programmes, such as programmes in mathematics, science and computer technology, to advance opportunities for all girls and women; and
6. Provide non-formal education, especially for rural women, in order to realise their potential with regard to health, micro-enterprise, agriculture and legal rights.
These are just a few of the many points of actions that the BPfA recommends to ensure that girls (and women) have equal access to education and its benefits.
For more on BPfA, visit Toolkit for Women, Earth Summit 2002
References:
>>Girls left out, countries left behind
The State of the World's Children 2004
UNESCO
>>Fact Sheets and Statistics
Campaign for Education
>>Global education digest shows rapid growth in secondary education worldwide
Global Education Digest
>>Millenium Development Goals - MDG GenderNet
Related Links:
A Fair Chance Attaining Gender Equality in Basic Education by 2005
Report Summary
Global Campaign for Education, April 2003
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Beijing +10: Conference on Women review
This global process was held in 2005 to review the implementation of the Platform for Action signed at the UN 4th World Conference on Women, in Beijing 1995.
Making literacy a priority
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The pros and cons of the slow but relentless process of integration of education into the market.
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Millennium Development Goals - MDGs
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Isis International Manila
Feminist NGO dedicated to women’s information and communication needs, based in the global South with sister organizations in Uganda (Isis-WICCE) and in Chile (Isis Internacional). Philippines.
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