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Strategies & Market Trends : India Coffee House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JPR who wrote (10815)	2/28/2000 12:53:00 PM
From: JPR	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12475

Educating the women THE Sindh education minister was absolutely right when she told a gathering of APWA members that education must be made accessible to the underprivileged women as well if a dent has to be made in the status of women in the country. It is now universally recognized that for a woman to assert herself to win her rights she must enjoy a measure of economic independence. But it is also patent that without education and training, women will find it hard to enter the highly competitive employment market. Hence the bottomline is that the struggle for women's emancipation must begin with their education. This is also important if women are to have awareness of their rights and an enlightened social environment has to be created to enable them to live with dignity and honour. The education of women is also of vital importance for the uplift of society. Surveys and studies have amply demonstrated that the higher the level of education of a woman the more positive is her approach to issues such as the education of children, family planning and health care. Taliban in Afghanistan says that a girl shouldn't go to school. And if she goes, she can only read and not write. The only males, females can interact with, are father, husband and brothers. That means past primary education with female teachers, a female in Afghanistan can't go for high School or college with male mentors/teachers ---JPR. It has been rightly observed that when you educate a woman you educate a whole family. It is, therefore, inconceivable that a nation which keeps its women illiterate and uneducated can progress very far. It is no coincidence that countries which are on the top rung of the economic and social development ladder also have a very high female literacy rate and do not discriminate against women in providing them access to education at all level. Where does Pakistan stand in this crucial area of national life? Obviously, the education minister knows how badly we have failed in educating our women and that is why she called on her audience to address this issue. True, women from the well-to-do families and social classes enjoy equality with men in acquiring education and many of them do much better than their male colleagues as the results of board and university examinations repeatedly show. But the majority of women in the country have been denied the benefit of any kind of formal education. Only 60 per cent of girls in the age group 5-9 years are enrolled in school. Nearly 80 per cent of them drop out before they reach middle school and thus, over a period of time, lapse into illiteracy. Small wonder, only 32 per cent of the women are counted as literate but quite a sizable number of them are no more than semi-literate. There is clearly a need to mobilize women in the field of education. While this calls for a concerted effort in consciousness-raising and creating the social environment conducive to the uplift of women, it is more important that the institutional support for female education be widened and an infrastructure put in place. This is primarily the state's responsibility. Unfortunately, in this respect the governments which have been in office in Pakistan have not done much to facilitate the education of women. Despite tall promises made and grandiose schemes for educational expansion are talked about from time to time by our decision makers, not even a significant number of educational institutions for girls are established every year when it is generally recognized that parents prefer to send their daughters to segregated girls' schools which are not too far from their homes. Thus, in 1998-99 the number of primary schools for girls increased by just three per cent compared to the previous year when boys' schools increased by five per cent. The irony of the situation is that in spite of this negative policy towards them, more and more women are displaying an eagerness to study if given a chance. This is evident from the higher growth rate in female enrolment (eight per cent) as compared to boys' enrolment (4.6 per cent) in the same period. The need is for a policy which actively encourages women's education by opening more schools for girls and upgrading the quality of education provided to children in order to make the process of learning purposive and meaningful from the point of view of self-improvement and development and refining of skills