Education for Gender Equality

Providing educational opportunities for women has been an important aspect in the National Policy for Education of the Government of India. Since Independence, there have been several efforts that have been targeting women and girls’ education. The need for educating the women was felt when India was moving ahead towards attaining Independence. The gender disparities were observed to a great extent among the rural areas. The feudalistic attitudes that prevailed among the Indian population created an atmosphere where the women were subdued and their roles got limited to the household chores and household responsibilities. 

The National Policy on Education (NPE, 1986) as revised in 1992 was a landmark in the field of policy for women’s education that could evade out the traditional gender imbalances caused due to illiteracy of women and girls. The NPE also spoke about the educational access and achievement. Later on there have been many policies that have come up to ensure that everyone in educated and acquires literacy. The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, the Right to Education are all such policy instruments that provide opportunities to education. The need of the hour is now creating demands for education from among the communities that accesses the education facilities being provided by the national government.

Since then there have been various experiments in India in various states by various national and International non-government organizations for the cause of women’s education.

The 73rd Amendment of the Constitution (Panchayat Raj Act, 1992) also came in and provided impetus to the movement of women’s literacy programs across the country. The Act provided political rights to the women in the rural areas for which they were not prepared and had received it without any effort. The leaders and the strategists of the country had envisioned for a free India where there was a gender balance and the women enjoyed an equal status along with the men in the society.

 The various duties and responsibilities of the elected women panchayat members also created a pressure among the women to attain literacy. The women had added responsibilities of managing the community development activities, organize meetings, manage accounts and minutes of meetings, select beneficiaries for development programs, conduct microplanning exercises along with the participation of the communities etc. There is a long list of activities that the women Panchayat members were expected to perform. 

Some of the famous experiments towards educating women are Mahila Samakhya Program. The program focused mainly on the participation of women and communities in order to empower women. The empowering process included many activities like meetings, trainings, creating pedagogy and innovative instructional materials for making the women literate, mobilizing them to raise their voice against injustice towards women, creating Self-Help Groups to enable livelihood opportunities etc.  Many organizations also started coming up with products produced by the Self Help Groups that could be marketed simultaneously

The prima facie objective of such developmental programs by the NGOs was to develop grassroots level strategies and activities that would facilitate a positive, self sustaining impact in education. The training programs focused on discussing and spelling out the traditional cultural beliefs and values that were impediments to the education of women. 

The barriers to education ken into account to develop strategies to combat the rural women’ s illiteracy. Some of them were as follows: 

1. Low demand for education

• Identify problems/reasons for parents not sending their daughters to school;
• Identify solutions to address the problems; and 
• Design strategies and activities that are self sustaining.

The problems for Low Demand for Education were classified at four levels among the communities as follows: 

At the Girl Child level

• Lack of awareness of importance of education
• Poor nutritional and health status
• Negative self image

At the Household/Family level

• Domestic Chores and child care/rearing responsibilities
• Inability to bear the cost of education/economic problem
• Parental illiteracy
• Parents unaware of importance of education
• Practice of early marriage
• Too many children in the families
• Competing demands for scarce household resources (use of alcohol by father)

At the Community level

• Lack of congenial and supporting environment
• Cultural biases and beliefs about girls education (Adverse comments by the community, eve teasing etc)
• Practice of early marriage
• Concern for girls’ physical safety and security

At the School level

• Lack of schools in the vicinity of the neighborhood areas
• Inadequate/lack of school structure (lack of toilets, safe drinking water)
• Inadequate/lack of health facilities at school
• Inadequate teachers supervision and support
• Lack of discipline in teachers
• Ineffective teaching resulting in teacher encouraging copying during tests/exams
• Teachers asking favors from students
• Teachers not understanding their role and responsibility
• Objective of going to school is not achieved due to low achievement
• Lack of qualified teachers in schools
• Teachers from higher castes sometimes alienate lower castes/poor groups
• Education irrelevant and poor quality
• Inadequate employment/skill training programs for girls

The strategies that could be adopted were as follows:

1. Inaccessibility to education

• Identify problems related to girls’ inaccessibility to education;
• Identify solutions to address the problems; and 
• Design self sustaining strategies and activities to improve access.

The problems for inaccessibility to Education were classified at the following levels: 

At the family level

• Parental illiteracy 
• Low parental importance and priority places on girls’ education
• Poverty
• Lack of parents participation in girls’ education
• Family responsibilities – household chores and sibling care
• Cultural beliefs and biases related to girls’ education
• Parental concern for daughter’s safety
• Feudal attitude and social pressure
• Distance of school/lack of school at village level
• School environment is not congenial
• Insensitive teachers
• Irrelevant education
• Lack of female teachers

1. Quality of education

• Identify problems related to quality of education;
• Identify solutions to address the problems; and 
• Design positive and self sustaining strategies and activities to improve quality of education.

The problems for Irrelevant and poor quality of Education were classified as follows: 

• Lack of community participation
• Irrelevant curriculum
• One way communication in class –room
• Lack of co-curricular activities in schools
• Short comings on part of primary teachers:
• Lack of motivation/Sensitivity
• Lack of communication with community
• Lack of proper training
• Lack of proper supervision from Officials
• Evaluation is quantitative and not qualitative
• Poor Infrastructure

4. Economic constraints to education

• Identifying the costs for investing in daughter’s education
• Indirect cost recovery due to daughter’s education

On the other hand, the discussion on benefits to women and girls’ education were also flourishing across the mobilization programs of education. 

The youth of today can focus on the above strategies to implement any community education program. There is a lot of scope for them to identify their career in the development sector. The above stated strategies calls for detailed planning skills in terms of Human resources, financial management, communication skills for advocating with the government, mobilizing the communities for exercising their rights towards access to quality education. The youth could also develop their capacities in training skills.