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Girl Education: A Challenge For Rural Transformation In India

By Swaleha.A.Sindhi

03 October, 2013
Countercurrents.org

Introduction

Socialization of the girl child in India seems to have followed a set pattern where she has-been trapped and moulded by deep-rooted combined cultures of patriarchy and hierarchy. Women as such can be dubbed as a population at risk because of their limited access to resources and opportunities and their systematic exclusion from the position of decision-making. What is more important is that the process of exclusion tends to start at the grass root, the family level. Herein a girl child is subjected to kind of languages and practices, which patronize exclusion of various natures at variety of levels. What could be more heinous than killing female fetus and infants? The female foeticide and infanticides, the most horrendous of gender crimes, increasing steeply. It is the violation of the most basic human rights, the right to be born. Women with higher social status are likely to be more sensitive to female child’s need and aspiration. Therefore, education brings economic liberation, which in turn facilitates social liberation. Further, women’s economic rights in terms of land ownership and inheritance may be important. The positive aspect is that a good mix of public policy can influence all these. Meaning thereby, there are chances that the missing women can be rescued.

Policy Perspectives

The policy framework, provision of educational opportunities for women and girls has been an important part of the national endeavor in the field of education since Independence. Though these endeavors did yield significant results, gender disparities persist, more so in rural areas and among disadvantaged communities. The National Policy on Education (NPE, 1986) as revised in 1992 was landmark in the field of policy on women’s education in that it recognized the need to redress traditional gender imbalances in educational access and achievement. The NPE also recognized that enhancing infrastructure alone will not redress the problem. It recognized that “the empowerment of women is possibly the most critical pre condition for the participation of girls and women in the educational process”. The programme of Action (POA, 1992), in the section “Education for Women’s Equality” (Chapter-XII, pages. 105-107), focuses on empowerment of women as the critical precondition for their participation in the education process. The POA states that education can be an effective tool for women’s empowerment, ensuring equal participation in developmental processes; The Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan stresses on improving access to secondary schooling to all young person according to norms through proximate location (say, Secondary Schools within 5 kms, and Higher Secondary Schools within 7-10 kms) / efficient and safe transport arrangements/residential facilities, depending on local circumstances including open schooling and ensures that no child is deprived of secondary education of satisfactory quality due to gender, socio-economic, disability and other barriers.

Gender Inequality in Access to Education

Education seems to be the key factor, which only can initiate a chain of advantages to females. However, the access to education is differently perceived for male and female. Key indicators such as literacy, enrollment and years spent in school explain the situation in the access to education and each of these indicators reveal that the level of female education in India is still low and lagging far behind their male counterpart. The low adult literacy rates for women are a reflection of past underinvestment in the education of women and thus do not necessarily capture the recent progress. The problem is not only confined to low enrollments, the girl’s school attendance has also been found incredibly low. Rural girls belong to disadvantaged groups as if SC and ST present the worst scenario. As per the data, girl dropout ratio has tended to increase with the enhancement in the level of education. This clearly outlines the pattern of gender inequality in access to education, which seems to be deepening as we move from lower to higher educational attainment and from urban to rural and to disadvantaged group in the society.

Why Women Remain Undereducated?

What explains the gender differentials in educational attainment? What makes women to remain outside the preview of change? Studies have tried to answer these questions on various planes. Economic benefits of education and the costs involved in undertaking such educational attainment have been perceived differently for men and women. Parents who bear the private costs of investing in schooling for girls and women fail to receive the full benefits of their investment. This is largely true because much of the payoff in educating women is broadly social in nature rather than economic. This endures the gender differentials.

Parent’s perception of current costs of education and future benefits there from influences the decision whether girl child should continue taking education or not. Costs are often measured in terms of distance to school and other direct costs involved such as fee paid, books bought, dress made etc. At times, the favor to son is made not only in education but also in allocation of food at mealtime, distribution of inheritance and even the language used. Apart from economic costs and benefits, there are costs involved at psychological planes well. The differential access based on the psychological perceptions is more firm and real threat. The factors herein include all such motives, which tend to make a parent reluctant to send daughters to school. One of the glaring factors is the concern for the physical and moral safety of a girl child which makes parents unwilling to let them travel distances to school each day. Religion and socio-cultural factors influence parents’ choice they may tend to search for a school where only girls are admitted and the one where women teachers are employed. The concern arises when girls reach puberty even education beyond the level of literacy for girls may be perceived as threat for their possibilities for marriage. Studies suggest that in Indian household’s seven-to-nine year old girls work as many as 120-150 per cent more hours than boys do do. Naturally, girls who would work more than their brothers at home will have less probability of attending school. In a joint family, the possibility of increased opportunity costs in these terms will be more. Does this mean when opportunity costs of educating girls and boys are identical, both will have equal chances of going to school? The answer, unfortunately, is no. Parents still keep girls at home to work and send their sons to school.

Conclusion

Education is one composite single variable, which has the capacity to transform many odds turning in favor of girls more specially so in the rural India. Therefore, an exclusive emphasis on girls’ education is necessary. Education for adolescent girls is constraint due to many factors; the most prominent of them is non-availability of infrastructure and schools. Secondly, the travel time taken in reaching school, fear of crime and unknown eventuality would rise therefore provision of public transport exclusively for girl child is necessary. A legal provision would help rescue girls from the early marriages and open doors of development for them. Awareness programme are needed which would focus on the dynamics of nutrition in physical and mental growth. However, it is to be reiterated at the end that girls need a lot of compassionate treatment and favor to enable them to lead a respectable and meaningful life, and in ensuring this, the role of family members and society is undoubtedly crucial and of prime significance and the change attitude of elders towards girls is urgently called for.

(Ms.Swaleha.A.Sindhi is Assistant Professor at The M.S.University of Baroda, Gujarat. She can be mailed at [email protected], Mob: +91-97257272)



 

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