gender and development simon oakes philip allan publishers © 2015

Philip Allan Publishers © 2015

Gender and development

Simon Oakes


Presentation outline

• Gender and development

• Traditional barriers to educating girls

• Educating girls is ‘smart economics’

• The Millennium Development Goals

• Primary school progress report

• More needs to be done



• Development means ways in which a place seeks to develop economically and to improve quality of life for its people.

• A country’s level of development is shown primarily by economic indicators of average wealth and/or income.

• Development encompasses a variety of social and political criteria too.

• Gender equality is widely regarded as an important indicator of development.



The Gender Inequality Index (GII) is a composite index devised by the United Nations. It measures gender inequalities related to three aspects of social and economic development. These are:

1. reproductive health, measured by maternal mortality ratio and adolescent birth rates

2. empowerment, measured by proportion of parliamentary seats occupied by females and proportion of adult females and males aged 25 years and older with some secondary education

3. the labour force participation rate of female and male populations aged 15 years and older


Traditional barriers to girls’ schooling

Poverty (e.g. poor parents need some of their

children to work and earn money instead

of studying)

Cultural barriers(e.g. the belief held by parents in some

societies that there is little value in girls’

education)

Perceived risks (e.g. parents may be

fearful of allowing girls to travel long distances to school

on their own in lawless rural areas )

Neglected needs (e.g. poor rural

schools may lack adequate sanitation

facilities for girls, leading to absences

and drop-outs)


Traditional barriers

• Opposition to education for girls is very strong in some places.

• Pakistan’s Swat Valley and northeast Nigeria are places where men have taken extreme measures to stop girls being educated.


Educating girls is ‘smart economics’

• If women are educated to the same high standard as mean, it improves a country’s human resources.

• There will be more skilled workers which can attract foreign direct investment from overseas (this happened in China).

• Microfinance schemes in India and Bangladesh have helped educated women to run their own businesses successfully.

• In all these ways, educating women helps grow a country’s gross domestic product (GDP).


Educating girls is ‘smart economics’

Better education for women

Economic growth of a

nation

Social status of women rises; women enter

work in politics, health and education

Fertility rates fall, and the health of children at home often improves

Can you explain the varied ways in which better education for women can help a country to develop economically?


Millennium Development Goals

• Eight specific objectives for the global community created at the UN Millennium Summit in New York in 2000.

• The Millennium Declaration, adopted by the world leaders, promised to: ‘free all men, women, and children from the abject and de-humanizing conditions of extreme poverty’.

• MDG 2 is ‘to achieve universal primary education’.

• MDG 3 has as one of its targets: ‘Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education’.


Millennium Development Goals


Primary school progress report

• According to the UN, primary-school enrolment in developing regions has increased from 80% to 90% since 1990.

• There has also been a significant reduction in the gender gap.

• In 1990, for every 100 boys enrolled in primary school in developing regions, there were 86 girls.

• By 2012 the figure had risen to 97 girls per 100 boys.

• However, significant differences between regions remain.


Western Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and

Oceania (Pacific island groups) still remain noticeably

below-average



• A key driver was the introduction of free primary education (FPE) in some countries (e.g. Zambia, Kenya).

• School feeding programmes run by organisations such as the UN World Food Programme act as an incentive for parents to send their children to school (a free meal at school saves parents money and also helps improve children’s concentration and learning in the classroom).

• Conditional cash transfer schemes include Brazil’s Bolsa Família programme. The head of a household is granted around US$12 a month per child, provided the child stays in education and has regular medical check-ups.



• More still needs to be done with primary schools in some countries.

• Growth in school attendance has not always been accompanied by an increase in school buildings, equipment or trained teachers.

• This means that the quality of education provided can be poor.

• There are also issues around what is taught and how it is taught.

‘If teachers focuson male pupils and ignore

female pupils in the classroom, gender inequality

will not be challenged. It is also vital that girls feel safe at school and are therefore able

to learn.’

Professor Katie Willis


Next step The secondary school challenge

• Education remains key in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that will replace the MDGs (which end in 2015).

• Governments and international agencies are turning their attention now to secondary schools.

• In much of Asia, Latin America and Africa there are significant differences between levels of secondary education in men and women aged 25 and over, as the following slides show.


Write a list of the names of as many countries as you can where the education of women is still below 40%.


Now look at the data for men. Can you name any countries where there is a marked imbalance?


Further reading

• United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI) has useful country-specific data on this topic: www.ungei.org

• UNICEF’s education website has data and case studies on gender and education themes: www.unicef.org/education

• UNWomen provides up-to-date gender statistics and details of development policies: www.unwomen.org/en

This resource is part of GEOGRAPHY REVIEW, a magazine written for A-level students by subject experts. To subscribe to the full magazine go to: http://www.hoddereducation.co.uk/geographyreview

http://www.ungei.org/

http://www.unicef.org/education

http://www.unicef.org/education

http://www.unwomen.org/en

http://www.unwomen.org/en

http://www.hoddereducation.co.uk/geographyreview

gender and development simon oakes philip allan publishers © 2015

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older philip allan publishers

economic development

countrys level of development

secondary education

gender disparity

gender inequalities

gender equality