October 07, 2007

Unless girls and women are given the same opportunities as their counterparts in education, Pakistan is not going to progress writes Moniza Inam

According to a recently released report by International Labour Organisation, the adult female illiteracy rate in the country is over 25 percentage point higher than that of males. The percentage points of the overall illiteracy between both male and female are 23.3 per cent for males and 46.9 per cent for females. Many people will not be surprised by these findings because gender disparity is the order of the day. The civil society, NGOs, educationists, independent economists and other concerned persons have long been mentioning this sad reality. However, it is not an isolated phenomenon; rather it is connected with the wider socio economic and cultural traditions of society.

Gender relations in Pakistani society rest on two basic annotations: women are inferior to men, and that a man’s honour resides in the actions of the women in his family. Therefore, they are responsible for maintaining the family honour. Thus, in order to ensure that women do not debase their families, society limits their mobility, places restrictions on their behaviour and activities, and permits them only limited contact with the opposite sex.

Patriarchy has used many accessible tools to differentiate and subdue women in Pakistan and education is one of their main controlling devices.

To understand the phenomenon there is a need to comprehend the mindset and its raison d’être as there have been a multitude of social, cultural and historical reasons that contribute towards low status of women. The social and cultural milieu of society is patriarchal in nature and men and women are hypothetically divided into two diverse arenas. Moreover, the patriarchal structures are relatively stronger in rural and tribal settings where local customs establish male authority and power over their lives and women are swap, sold and bought in marriages. The most disheartening aspect of this social training is the internalisation of these rules by both sexes especially women. The existing culture gives more importance to women’s reproductive capacities rather than their creative ones, which diminishes investment in their education.

Elaborating the problem, Dr Asad Sayeed, Director, Collective for Social Science Research, says: “The modern definition of poverty not only includes access to resources and assets but it also includes women’s right to healthy and successful life and free choices including education.” However, both these factors are still a remote dream because women neither have access to capital, property and gainful education, and society, as a whole, applies its influence in the form of religious, societal and cultural chauvinism and pressures, he adds.

Of late, the critical link between the status of women in society, particularly literacy level and a nation’s economic growth, has been well documented. A compelling body of evidence has proved that investing in girls’ education is the most effective way of pursuing a broad range of critical development objectives and that the returns on educating girls are greater than the returns on educating boys. It yields some of the highest returns of all development investments, generating both private and social benefits that accrue to individuals, families, and society at large.

Educated women have fewer children (it is estimated that one year of female schooling reduces fertility by 10 per cent and the effect is particularly pronounced for secondary schooling), provide better nutrition and health care for their families, experience significantly lower child mortality, generate more income and are far more likely to educate their children than women with little or no schooling, thus creating a virtuous cycle for the community and the county.

It is not only a matter of economics, as Dr Nafis Sadiq, the former head of United Nations Population Fund, has said, “Better health and education and freedom to plan their families’ future, will widen women’s economic choices; but it will also liberate their minds and spirits.”

Female illiteracy, by and large, has negative connotation because it leads towards discrimination in every aspect of life. It goes towards what in sociology is known as participatory poverty. In this type of poverty the disadvantaged sections are not included in the development process be it social, economic, educational or political in nature and it automatically leads towards low participation level in decision making in household matters, health, education, etc. and traps the person in the vicious circle of poverty permanently. On a societal level, it leads towards a more discriminatory attitude i.e. the patriarchy make laws which are discriminatory in nature and thus prejudice acquires institutionalised form.

The other type of poverty is capacity poverty and it is all about skills and discrimination on its basis. Men get preferential treatment in the job market because they have more education and skills and women, minorities, the poor, and other disadvantaged and vulnerable groups are left out of the development process. As maintained by the development experts, the gender gap and the low level of girls’ educational participation and performance are the result of the collective effects of supply and demand factors and the ways they work together with the policy, socio-cultural and economic environment.

Supply-side factors include the availability of schools, the quality of services they provide, and the extent to which the services are adapted to the special needs of girls. Demand-side factors relate to how girls and their families respond to the kind of schooling made available by the state and by religious and private groups. Important determinants include the direct costs (e.g. fees, uniforms, transport, and books) as well as the opportunity cost of education.

According to a report, although there has been a major improvement in this sector in the 1990s, Pakistan is still considered to have the largest gender gap in the literacy ratio. However, there has been some progress in female literacy rate rising from 16% in 1980 to 21% in 1990 and jumping to 33% in 1997. In the decade of 90s, due to an emphasis on female education, the literacy rate increased by 1.5% per year.

There are many factors that contribute to the widespread gender disparity in the country — which is on the higher side even by the South Asian standards. Firstly, since cultural norms discourage women’s participation in the labour market, job opportunities are limited for them and it reduces the market return to female education. Secondly, in the rural areas, the opportunity cost of sending daughters to school is greater as they are responsible for domestic chores. Thirdly, as daughters leave their parental house after marriage the expected benefit of educating them is small relative to sons.

Pakistan’s planners have focussed their attention on a free market economy, macroeconomic stabilisation, attracting foreign investment, privatisation and enhancing foreign exchange reserves. However, they have forgotten that trained and educated workers, especially skilled women workforce, can be really helpful in achieving all the aforementioned aims.

Education, health and other social sectors stand low on the government’s priority list and hence low financial allocations for these sectors. As Dr Sayeed enunciates, “Traditionally defence expenditures have consumed most of the budgetary provisions on the name of strategic interests.”

The government has claimed in the Pakistan Economic Survey 2006-7 that due to its policies the Gender Parity Index (GPI) for Gross Enrolment Rate (GER) at the primary level increased from 0.73 in 2001-02 to 0.85 in 2005-6 and for Net Enrolment Rate (NER) at the primary level it increased from 0.82 to 0.85 during the same period. The government planners have argued that the increase in GPI at the national and provincial level suggests that gender disparity in gross or net enrolment at primary level is gradually being bridged. Though, this assertion is strongly contested by independent sources.

However, on Education For all (EFA) Development Index (EDI): a composite based on indicators for the four most measurable Dakar Goals i.e., universal primary education, adult literacy, education quality (using survival rate of pupils to class five as a proxy) and gender parity — Pakistan was ranked 123 out of 127 countries studied and being the fifth worst performer.

According to UNICEF research, the largest out of school group is of girls, particularly those living in rural areas in the country. They face both subtle and rigid hurdles from their families and communities in the form of over protection and perceptions of honour that result in their restricted mobility and controlled social roles limiting them to motherhood and unacknowledged and unpaid family labour.

Elaborating the issue further, Arshed H. Bhatti associated with Civil Junction, a social enterprise working for the opening up of a political social environment has rightly pointed out, “Cultural barriers are just one aspect of hurdles in their early education. Poverty, child labour, distance from schools, security issues, irrelevance of curriculum, lack of female teachers, fewer girls’ schools, scarcity of facilities (from text books, to hygiene and sanitation), and a lack of appreciation of the value of girls’ education combine to tighten the social noose of prohibition and restriction around them.”

In the end, it can be concluded safely that female education and employment is still a neglected field in Pakistan. In order to bring changes in the lives of disadvantaged women, there is a need to follow a pro-active approach to address all the above-mentioned problems that create hurdles in female literacy. Changing the mindset of the people at large is the most vital requirement and all other issues come after that. Over the years, we, as a nation, have been strayed from the dreams of our founding fathers, who dreamed of a moderate, secular and forward-looking homeland. By following the Quaid’s philosophy, we can bring revolution in the lives of millions of disenfranchised women who have been trapped in the vicious circle of poverty and deprivation.

Email: moniza.inam@dawn.com