How to Deal with the Problem of Gender Differentials?
Dr.M.K. Ghadoliya
Deptt. of Economics
V.M. Open University, Kota
United Nations Decade for education for sustainable development began in the year 2005. Since long economists have proved a positive relation between education and development. In September, 2000 at the UN Millennium Summit World leaders agreed to a set of eight time bound and measurable goals and targets to achieve by the year 2015. They are now called the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). A hot topic at all meetings these days is to discuss the progress made by various countries in achieving these goals. MDGs relates to combating poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women. Among these MDGs the one which relates to Gender inequality is of vital importance and is a key to achieving many other objectives, such as universal primary education and a reduction in under-5 mortality. The performance of our country on this issue is not very much encouraging. Girls receive discrimination on almost on counts. These girls face discrimination as they come from lower income groups. One way to pinpoint the policies needed to reduce gender disparities are through gender budgeting, which involves the systematic examination of budget programmes and policies for their impact on women. Education is important in addressing the issue. We may establish a separate women’s University to address the issue of Gender Discrimination. The real challenge is to meet the ever increasing demand of education without compromising with quality. What should be done to ensure quality? Is opening separate Women’s Universities and opening the field for the international players a solution? How could we meet the demand for quality education? How could we promote gender equality? These are some of the questions that need to be discussed at length. Unless we ensure getting all girls into schools this is not going to happen. In India, 37 percent of girls aged 7-14 belonging to the socially deprived castes and tribes do not attend school. Practical actions to promote education for “excluded” girls are required to ensure gender equality.
Introduction
United Nations Decade for sustainable development began in the year 2005 has attempted to blend the concept of education for sustainable development with environmental education, which was given new momentum at the Bio-diversity Summit in Rio-de-Janeiro in 1992 with the campaign for "Education for all" that was reenergized at the Dakar World Forum in 2000. The fact has been proved again and again that there is a positive relation between education and development. Development according to Prof. Amartya Sen is the enhancement of freedom. The measure of development is the extent to which people enjoy greater freedom on more dimensions. Education is Central to development and freedom is also the means of development.
In September, 2000 at the U.N. Millennium Summit World leaders agreed to a set of time bound and measurable goals and targets of combating poverty, hunger disease illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women. They are now known as Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with just 8 years remaining to meet the MDGs the Global community is focused on what's being done to halve poverty from 1990 levels by the target date of 2015 and to meet several other objectives, including improving health and education.
The Eight MDGs for 2015 are:
1. Halve extreme Poverty and Hunger
2. Achieve Universal Primary Education
3. Empower Women and promote Equality
4. Reduce Under 5 Mortality by Two-third
5. Reduce Maternal Mortality by Three-fourth
6. Reverse the spread of Disease especially HIV/AIDS and Malaria
7. Ensure Environmental Sustainability
8. Create a Global Partnership for Development with targets for Aid Trade and Debt relief.
Thus Gender Disparity MDG-3 is much lower on the scale at number three among Eight U.N. Goals. Greater focus on MDG-3 is critical -although valuable in its own right as an important development objective- it is also a key to achieving several other MDGs. The empirical evidence favours the view that greater gender equality helps in reduction in poverty and women empowerment.
Concept of Gender and Gender Disparity in India
What is Gender:
“Gender refers to the socially constructed and culturally variables roles that women and men play in their daily lives.” As a conceptual tool it has been used to highlight various structural relationship of inequality between men and women as manifested in labour markets and in political structures as well as in the household. Men and women are different. Society treats them as different and pays detail attention to maintaining and emphasising that difference through clothes, ornaments, gestures and roles. Men and women are similar but there is no general interest displayed in the similarity. Although men and women both are human beings and social beings, who share many things in common but the similarities are forgotten. Women’s specific and separate needs do not receive much attention. At best their needs and interests are subsumed under the general interest which is men’s interest. We are used to hearing words “men include women.” This assumption instead of including women ensures that men are ‘noun’ and women are perceived as also there. This perception affects the quality of women’s lives in profound ways and so there is need to examine and understand the difference and dimension between men and women and basis for this assumption.
The class distinction between men and women and basis for this assumption:
The class Distinction on which the term’s legitimacy depends, rests on the progressive demarcation of biological sex and socially constructed Gender. Sex refers to biological differences between men and women which are more or less same across and over time, but gender the socially constructed difference and relations between male and female varies greatly from place to place and from time to time. Gender can therefore be defined as a notion that offers a set of frameworks within which feminist theory has explained the social and discursive construction and representation of differences between sexes. According to Mansfield, “Attention to gender results in renewed emphasis being placed on the local structure of knowledge that one cannot speak on behalf of humanity as a whole and therefore that the specific position cannot claim to represent universal values but rather extremely specific ones.”
Gender is not synonymous with which tries to analyse social patterns development process and men and women can be seen as using gender as a category of analysis. Gender is often used as another word for women. The implication is that the problem and hence the solution concerns only women.
By Gender is meant men and women as active social and economic agents in their own right with the underlying sets and patterns of interrelationships that define them as human beings. To understand the levels at which gender operates one must take a look at the family at interpersonal levels, and at the way society is divided into the public and private spheres. One must go production reproduction, beyond the family to each institution to understand how gender operates there. Gender relations are present in all types of institutions from the school, market, street, workplace to state and religious institutions. It is important to understand how gender structures these institutions. And we can begin to understand each specific set of gender relations we can begin to workout strategies to transform them. It is not useful to generalise from any given set of gender relations but to evolve a strategy from each context.
Factors that shape gender relations and provide different opportunities and constraints for men and women and create gender disparity are many. Detail analysis of all those factors is not required here.
Gender Disparity refers to structural relationship of inequality between men and women in the society. Men and women are similar, as both are human beings but their biological difference is so highlighted that all similarities are forgotten and socially constructed difference and relations between male and females are greatly highlighted. Thus, it is essential to effectively remove gender disparity from any society for its healthy growth.
When women have more schooling, the returns flow not only to themselves but to the next generation as well. Female education is not encouraged so much in India because most parents tend to behave that education would make a girl less attentive to household chores and less willing to obey her parents and her husband. The doubts are institutionalised in female value system, as parents of educated girls must offer a high amount of dowry in order to attract better educated and well placed men.
Female are also under valued in society that their education generally gets neglected. Girls are expected to mind their young sibling and help mothers in household chores as far as possible. The Gender gap in education can be understood in the wider context of female disadvantage in India. Gender bias pervades all spheres of life and society and influences political decision making as well as intra-familial attitudes and values. The nature and intensity of this bias varies across economic systems and regions and over the life cycle of the individuals within households. This bias has been variously explained by cultural and religious factors as also by the position occupied by women in the labour market. Whatever the particular combination of causes may be the cycle of disadvantage starts before birth and continues from neglect of female children to widowhood.
The Obstacles to Gender Parity
Across the country the attendance, participation and success of the girls in schools is far outpaced by boys. Girls remain disadvantaged in education in more than one ways.
1. More than boys' girls are often required to help with chores care for the sick and for the younger siblings.
2. Grinding poverty is the single biggest obstacle to education for both boys and girls. But when there is shortage of money in the family, preference is given to boys over girls.
3. In rural areas girls will dropout of schools because of the insecurity of walking long distances to school.
4. Attendance is frequently interrupted by temporary suspension for non-payment of fees, arriving late to school or being in tattered clothes.
5. Girls performance is also affected by cultural norms biased curricula and discrimination in teaching methods.
All these create together negative environment that gradually pushes the girl out of school. The biggest question here is that how to bring these left out students back to schools so that the cycle of gender discrimination can be broken.
· The more laissez faire approach sees gender emancipation in general as a natural fall out of economic development. It is argued that the status of women, including their educational status will improve as a consequence of their increasing participation in labour market and development process.
· The second more activist strategy seeks the empowerment of women, either individually or through their involvement in institutions, organisations and collectives. This will increase their visibility and give them more autonomy and bargaining power within the household and in the society.
· It could be argued that political indifference, bureaucratic inertia rather than poverty and discriminating cultural practices are equally valid reasons for India's poor performance in reducing gender gaps in education.
There are high Gender disparities in literacy levels in India. The available statistics provide adequate evidence to argue that there continues to be considerable gaps literacy by sex in India. Female literacy at national levels has risen steadily from mere 8% in 1951 to 54% in 2001. Although the gender disparity is declining over the years at the national level but vast differences exists across regions over the years.
Gender Gaps in Literacy in Selected States: India
StateState
Gender Gap (Per cent)
1991 2001
Bihar
29.6 29.75
M.P.
29.6 26.52
Haryana
28.6 22.94
Orissa
28.4 24.98
Rajasthan
34.6 32.12
U.P.
30.4 27.25
India
24.4 21.69
It is evident from the table given above that there has been considerable improvement in the situation. However, the differential in male female literacy is still substantial in India 21.69% according to Census 2001. In Rajasthan it is as high as 32.12 per cent. The situation in other parts of the world is not very different. UNESCO (2006) recently estimated that 43 million school age girls are not enrolled in schooling many more complete fewer than 6 years of schooling and a gap between boys and girls remains in some countries. This gap is due overwhelming to the lag in schooling of socially excluded groups, often minority groups that are on the margins of society, and in which girls are at a distinct disadvantages relative to boys. Indeed, we estimate that approximately 70 per cent of these out-of-school girls come from such groups. Enrolment rates of women lag behind those of men in 63 countries out of 130 countries for which the UNESCO has data. The data also reveal that of the nearly 137 million illiterate youths in the world, 63 Percent are female. The female to male literacy ratio is lowest in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, and South Asia. Now the question is, who are they? Obviously they are from the scheduled caste, scheduled tribes and other backward castes in rural areas. Here the major question is why is it so?
Reasons for Gender Disparity in Education
Reasons are complex and many to list some of them:
v Uneducated parents
v Irrelevant education
v A need for child labour and apprenticeship with in family farms/business
v Direct costs of fees, books, and uniforms.
v General resistance to change
v A desire to retain a separate ethnic identity
v Limited employment opportunities
v Low economic returns to those who attended schools
v Lack of accessible and acceptance schools
v Concern for safety especially adolescent girls
v Girls are married away and join their husband's family
v More dropout due to discrimination and mistreatment
v Educated girls find it difficult to get match for marriage.
Reaching and teaching excluded girls-
1. Make education policies fair.
2. Expand schooling options:
School timing to suit the local requirement informal alternative schools can attract schools from excluded groups more easily then schools located at a distance. For example, in Rajasthan, community schools that employed paraprofessional teachers allowed the community to select and supervise teachers and hired part time workers to escort girls from excluded groups to school had higher enrolment attendance and test scores to public schools.
3. Improve physical environment and instructional materials
Girls are less likely than boys to enrol in and more likely to dropout of schools that are in poor physical condition (for example with leaky roof) whose teachers are often absent and with inadequate materials. And those who stay in schools under these circumstances especially if only the majority language is taught tend to perform poorly.
In fact studies show that schools quality matters more for excluded girls.
4. Gender-of the teacher's matter.
5. Incentives for household to send girls to schools offer conditional cash transfer (School feeding mid day meal) scholarships and stipends for girls. They have been highly effective in Bangladesh scholarships for girls increased their enrolment to twice the national average for females. There are evidence of higher literacy rates and gender parity among youth (ages 15-24). But Gender gaps remain the present system of fixing macroeconomic targets does not categorically discuss and have sufficient data at national level on gender difference. Two recent IMF studies focus on the interaction between gender and macroeconomics and gender and budget processes. It is not that obvious how to go about incorporating gender differences in economic behaviour and policy outcomes into macroeconomic policymaking. After all in macroeconomics, one typically looks at the aggregate, or overall, economy. But economists are now taking a much stronger interest in how gender affects aggregate income as well as key components of overall economic demand, focusing on household decision making.
Although the evidence about the relationship between women's inferior status and growth is not fully conclusive but a World Bank study suggests that countries that take steps to increase women's access to education, health care, employment and credit increase their pace of development and reduce poverty[1]. One way for countries to pinpoint policies to reduce gender disparities and adopt policy for gender budgeting which involves the systematic examination of the budget programmes and policies for their impact on women.
6. Budgeting for Gender
In 1995 Beijing World Conference on Women this demand received a big push. This type of budgeting promotes greater accountability on how governments are doing in terms of promoting gender equality and helps ensure that budgets and policies are geared toward achieving gender equality. It is not intended to analyse only programmes that are specially targeted to females or to produce a separate "women's" budget. Rather, it is intended to examine the gender effects of all government programmes and policies. Many persons may not agree to this suggestion and may raise their voice to argue why budget with only gender in mind? What about other groups in the population whose interests may have received insufficient attention? In principal, the budget processes should take into account the elimination of any disparities that are socially harmful. Some groups have organised themselves to assert their interests. What is clear is that there is no such thing as a gender-neutral government budget. Many Government proposals affect or burden women more than men knowingly or unknowingly e.g. provision for clean water, school fees, health care.
Is there an economic justification for gender budgeting? It is difficult to answer but one thing is clear that will create a fairer society.
How gender budgets have faired?
Since 1984, some 40 countries from all regions of the world have tried some form of gender budgeting, typically at the national level but in some cases at the subnational level the initiatives have been led by the government (the executive or legislative branch) or by civil society. Most of these initiatives have focused on the spending side of the budget, but a few countries have looked at the revenue side as well.
Australia was the first country to formally incorporate gender budgeting by developing countries the concept of a woman's budget. South Africa followed suit in 1995 as a part of its push to eliminate inequalities following the end of apartheid. One tangible result in South Africa was the elimination of gender discrimination from the personal income tax, where some women were taxed more heavily than men with equivalent income. In European Union, gender equality has long been a priority, with gender-budgeting initiatives under way in a number of countries, including in Scandinavia and Spain. Other initiatives include the Women's budget Group in the United Kingdom, which comments on the fiscal policies of each annual budget. In India, researchers have assessed the adequacy of budgetary programs to address women's needs and reduce gender disparities. In Mexico, non-governmental organisations have worked with federal and state governments combine solid academic analysis with advocacy for gender equality and poverty reduction within the budgetary context and in Rwanda gender-budgeting initiatives is used to inform the national debate about policy and allocation of the resources.
Summary
We conclude Women face discrimination at all levels in all Countries. In many cases, such policies are needed that policies that remove gender-specific barriers, thus ensuring a more level playing field for males and females. This requires budgetary expenditures to scale up policies and monitor progress in attaining targets set for MDGs. Gender budgeting should be incorporated into standard budget processes so that it becomes fully institutionalised as individual initiatives adopted with enthusiasm may not be sustained. The gender budgeting should cover both spending and revenue. Government should monitor the progress of all MDGs regularly so that we achieve the targets.
References
Janet Stotsky, Janet G. (2007) “Why using the Budget to Empower Women makes good Economic Sense”. F&D, June.
Buvinic, Mayra and Elizabeth, M. King, (2007) “Smart Economics” F&D, June.
World Bank, (2005), World Development Report- 2006, Equity & Development, OUP, New York.
UNESCO, (2006) “Global Monitoring Report: Strong foundation:, Early Childhood Education”, Paris.
[1] World Bank (2001) Engendering Development: Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources and Voice, Oxford University Press, New York, and also Klasen, Stephan (2007) Pro-Poor Growth and Gender Inequality: Insights from new Research, Poverty in Focus, International Poverty Centre, March, pp 5-7.
Dr.M.K. Ghadoliya
Deptt. of Economics
V.M. Open University, Kota
ABSTRACT
United Nations Decade for education for sustainable development began in the year 2005. Since long economists have proved a positive relation between education and development. In September, 2000 at the UN Millennium Summit World leaders agreed to a set of eight time bound and measurable goals and targets to achieve by the year 2015. They are now called the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). A hot topic at all meetings these days is to discuss the progress made by various countries in achieving these goals. MDGs relates to combating poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women. Among these MDGs the one which relates to Gender inequality is of vital importance and is a key to achieving many other objectives, such as universal primary education and a reduction in under-5 mortality. The performance of our country on this issue is not very much encouraging. Girls receive discrimination on almost on counts. These girls face discrimination as they come from lower income groups. One way to pinpoint the policies needed to reduce gender disparities are through gender budgeting, which involves the systematic examination of budget programmes and policies for their impact on women. Education is important in addressing the issue. We may establish a separate women’s University to address the issue of Gender Discrimination. The real challenge is to meet the ever increasing demand of education without compromising with quality. What should be done to ensure quality? Is opening separate Women’s Universities and opening the field for the international players a solution? How could we meet the demand for quality education? How could we promote gender equality? These are some of the questions that need to be discussed at length. Unless we ensure getting all girls into schools this is not going to happen. In India, 37 percent of girls aged 7-14 belonging to the socially deprived castes and tribes do not attend school. Practical actions to promote education for “excluded” girls are required to ensure gender equality.
Introduction
United Nations Decade for sustainable development began in the year 2005 has attempted to blend the concept of education for sustainable development with environmental education, which was given new momentum at the Bio-diversity Summit in Rio-de-Janeiro in 1992 with the campaign for "Education for all" that was reenergized at the Dakar World Forum in 2000. The fact has been proved again and again that there is a positive relation between education and development. Development according to Prof. Amartya Sen is the enhancement of freedom. The measure of development is the extent to which people enjoy greater freedom on more dimensions. Education is Central to development and freedom is also the means of development.
In September, 2000 at the U.N. Millennium Summit World leaders agreed to a set of time bound and measurable goals and targets of combating poverty, hunger disease illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women. They are now known as Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with just 8 years remaining to meet the MDGs the Global community is focused on what's being done to halve poverty from 1990 levels by the target date of 2015 and to meet several other objectives, including improving health and education.
The Eight MDGs for 2015 are:
1. Halve extreme Poverty and Hunger
2. Achieve Universal Primary Education
3. Empower Women and promote Equality
4. Reduce Under 5 Mortality by Two-third
5. Reduce Maternal Mortality by Three-fourth
6. Reverse the spread of Disease especially HIV/AIDS and Malaria
7. Ensure Environmental Sustainability
8. Create a Global Partnership for Development with targets for Aid Trade and Debt relief.
Thus Gender Disparity MDG-3 is much lower on the scale at number three among Eight U.N. Goals. Greater focus on MDG-3 is critical -although valuable in its own right as an important development objective- it is also a key to achieving several other MDGs. The empirical evidence favours the view that greater gender equality helps in reduction in poverty and women empowerment.
Concept of Gender and Gender Disparity in India
What is Gender:
“Gender refers to the socially constructed and culturally variables roles that women and men play in their daily lives.” As a conceptual tool it has been used to highlight various structural relationship of inequality between men and women as manifested in labour markets and in political structures as well as in the household. Men and women are different. Society treats them as different and pays detail attention to maintaining and emphasising that difference through clothes, ornaments, gestures and roles. Men and women are similar but there is no general interest displayed in the similarity. Although men and women both are human beings and social beings, who share many things in common but the similarities are forgotten. Women’s specific and separate needs do not receive much attention. At best their needs and interests are subsumed under the general interest which is men’s interest. We are used to hearing words “men include women.” This assumption instead of including women ensures that men are ‘noun’ and women are perceived as also there. This perception affects the quality of women’s lives in profound ways and so there is need to examine and understand the difference and dimension between men and women and basis for this assumption.
The class distinction between men and women and basis for this assumption:
The class Distinction on which the term’s legitimacy depends, rests on the progressive demarcation of biological sex and socially constructed Gender. Sex refers to biological differences between men and women which are more or less same across and over time, but gender the socially constructed difference and relations between male and female varies greatly from place to place and from time to time. Gender can therefore be defined as a notion that offers a set of frameworks within which feminist theory has explained the social and discursive construction and representation of differences between sexes. According to Mansfield, “Attention to gender results in renewed emphasis being placed on the local structure of knowledge that one cannot speak on behalf of humanity as a whole and therefore that the specific position cannot claim to represent universal values but rather extremely specific ones.”
Gender is not synonymous with which tries to analyse social patterns development process and men and women can be seen as using gender as a category of analysis. Gender is often used as another word for women. The implication is that the problem and hence the solution concerns only women.
By Gender is meant men and women as active social and economic agents in their own right with the underlying sets and patterns of interrelationships that define them as human beings. To understand the levels at which gender operates one must take a look at the family at interpersonal levels, and at the way society is divided into the public and private spheres. One must go production reproduction, beyond the family to each institution to understand how gender operates there. Gender relations are present in all types of institutions from the school, market, street, workplace to state and religious institutions. It is important to understand how gender structures these institutions. And we can begin to understand each specific set of gender relations we can begin to workout strategies to transform them. It is not useful to generalise from any given set of gender relations but to evolve a strategy from each context.
Factors that shape gender relations and provide different opportunities and constraints for men and women and create gender disparity are many. Detail analysis of all those factors is not required here.
Gender Disparity refers to structural relationship of inequality between men and women in the society. Men and women are similar, as both are human beings but their biological difference is so highlighted that all similarities are forgotten and socially constructed difference and relations between male and females are greatly highlighted. Thus, it is essential to effectively remove gender disparity from any society for its healthy growth.
When women have more schooling, the returns flow not only to themselves but to the next generation as well. Female education is not encouraged so much in India because most parents tend to behave that education would make a girl less attentive to household chores and less willing to obey her parents and her husband. The doubts are institutionalised in female value system, as parents of educated girls must offer a high amount of dowry in order to attract better educated and well placed men.
Female are also under valued in society that their education generally gets neglected. Girls are expected to mind their young sibling and help mothers in household chores as far as possible. The Gender gap in education can be understood in the wider context of female disadvantage in India. Gender bias pervades all spheres of life and society and influences political decision making as well as intra-familial attitudes and values. The nature and intensity of this bias varies across economic systems and regions and over the life cycle of the individuals within households. This bias has been variously explained by cultural and religious factors as also by the position occupied by women in the labour market. Whatever the particular combination of causes may be the cycle of disadvantage starts before birth and continues from neglect of female children to widowhood.
The Obstacles to Gender Parity
Across the country the attendance, participation and success of the girls in schools is far outpaced by boys. Girls remain disadvantaged in education in more than one ways.
1. More than boys' girls are often required to help with chores care for the sick and for the younger siblings.
2. Grinding poverty is the single biggest obstacle to education for both boys and girls. But when there is shortage of money in the family, preference is given to boys over girls.
3. In rural areas girls will dropout of schools because of the insecurity of walking long distances to school.
4. Attendance is frequently interrupted by temporary suspension for non-payment of fees, arriving late to school or being in tattered clothes.
5. Girls performance is also affected by cultural norms biased curricula and discrimination in teaching methods.
All these create together negative environment that gradually pushes the girl out of school. The biggest question here is that how to bring these left out students back to schools so that the cycle of gender discrimination can be broken.
· The more laissez faire approach sees gender emancipation in general as a natural fall out of economic development. It is argued that the status of women, including their educational status will improve as a consequence of their increasing participation in labour market and development process.
· The second more activist strategy seeks the empowerment of women, either individually or through their involvement in institutions, organisations and collectives. This will increase their visibility and give them more autonomy and bargaining power within the household and in the society.
· It could be argued that political indifference, bureaucratic inertia rather than poverty and discriminating cultural practices are equally valid reasons for India's poor performance in reducing gender gaps in education.
There are high Gender disparities in literacy levels in India. The available statistics provide adequate evidence to argue that there continues to be considerable gaps literacy by sex in India. Female literacy at national levels has risen steadily from mere 8% in 1951 to 54% in 2001. Although the gender disparity is declining over the years at the national level but vast differences exists across regions over the years.
Gender Gaps in Literacy in Selected States: India
StateState
Gender Gap (Per cent)
1991 2001
Bihar
29.6 29.75
M.P.
29.6 26.52
Haryana
28.6 22.94
Orissa
28.4 24.98
Rajasthan
34.6 32.12
U.P.
30.4 27.25
India
24.4 21.69
It is evident from the table given above that there has been considerable improvement in the situation. However, the differential in male female literacy is still substantial in India 21.69% according to Census 2001. In Rajasthan it is as high as 32.12 per cent. The situation in other parts of the world is not very different. UNESCO (2006) recently estimated that 43 million school age girls are not enrolled in schooling many more complete fewer than 6 years of schooling and a gap between boys and girls remains in some countries. This gap is due overwhelming to the lag in schooling of socially excluded groups, often minority groups that are on the margins of society, and in which girls are at a distinct disadvantages relative to boys. Indeed, we estimate that approximately 70 per cent of these out-of-school girls come from such groups. Enrolment rates of women lag behind those of men in 63 countries out of 130 countries for which the UNESCO has data. The data also reveal that of the nearly 137 million illiterate youths in the world, 63 Percent are female. The female to male literacy ratio is lowest in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, and South Asia. Now the question is, who are they? Obviously they are from the scheduled caste, scheduled tribes and other backward castes in rural areas. Here the major question is why is it so?
Reasons for Gender Disparity in Education
Reasons are complex and many to list some of them:
v Uneducated parents
v Irrelevant education
v A need for child labour and apprenticeship with in family farms/business
v Direct costs of fees, books, and uniforms.
v General resistance to change
v A desire to retain a separate ethnic identity
v Limited employment opportunities
v Low economic returns to those who attended schools
v Lack of accessible and acceptance schools
v Concern for safety especially adolescent girls
v Girls are married away and join their husband's family
v More dropout due to discrimination and mistreatment
v Educated girls find it difficult to get match for marriage.
Reaching and teaching excluded girls-
1. Make education policies fair.
2. Expand schooling options:
School timing to suit the local requirement informal alternative schools can attract schools from excluded groups more easily then schools located at a distance. For example, in Rajasthan, community schools that employed paraprofessional teachers allowed the community to select and supervise teachers and hired part time workers to escort girls from excluded groups to school had higher enrolment attendance and test scores to public schools.
3. Improve physical environment and instructional materials
Girls are less likely than boys to enrol in and more likely to dropout of schools that are in poor physical condition (for example with leaky roof) whose teachers are often absent and with inadequate materials. And those who stay in schools under these circumstances especially if only the majority language is taught tend to perform poorly.
In fact studies show that schools quality matters more for excluded girls.
4. Gender-of the teacher's matter.
5. Incentives for household to send girls to schools offer conditional cash transfer (School feeding mid day meal) scholarships and stipends for girls. They have been highly effective in Bangladesh scholarships for girls increased their enrolment to twice the national average for females. There are evidence of higher literacy rates and gender parity among youth (ages 15-24). But Gender gaps remain the present system of fixing macroeconomic targets does not categorically discuss and have sufficient data at national level on gender difference. Two recent IMF studies focus on the interaction between gender and macroeconomics and gender and budget processes. It is not that obvious how to go about incorporating gender differences in economic behaviour and policy outcomes into macroeconomic policymaking. After all in macroeconomics, one typically looks at the aggregate, or overall, economy. But economists are now taking a much stronger interest in how gender affects aggregate income as well as key components of overall economic demand, focusing on household decision making.
Although the evidence about the relationship between women's inferior status and growth is not fully conclusive but a World Bank study suggests that countries that take steps to increase women's access to education, health care, employment and credit increase their pace of development and reduce poverty[1]. One way for countries to pinpoint policies to reduce gender disparities and adopt policy for gender budgeting which involves the systematic examination of the budget programmes and policies for their impact on women.
6. Budgeting for Gender
In 1995 Beijing World Conference on Women this demand received a big push. This type of budgeting promotes greater accountability on how governments are doing in terms of promoting gender equality and helps ensure that budgets and policies are geared toward achieving gender equality. It is not intended to analyse only programmes that are specially targeted to females or to produce a separate "women's" budget. Rather, it is intended to examine the gender effects of all government programmes and policies. Many persons may not agree to this suggestion and may raise their voice to argue why budget with only gender in mind? What about other groups in the population whose interests may have received insufficient attention? In principal, the budget processes should take into account the elimination of any disparities that are socially harmful. Some groups have organised themselves to assert their interests. What is clear is that there is no such thing as a gender-neutral government budget. Many Government proposals affect or burden women more than men knowingly or unknowingly e.g. provision for clean water, school fees, health care.
Is there an economic justification for gender budgeting? It is difficult to answer but one thing is clear that will create a fairer society.
How gender budgets have faired?
Since 1984, some 40 countries from all regions of the world have tried some form of gender budgeting, typically at the national level but in some cases at the subnational level the initiatives have been led by the government (the executive or legislative branch) or by civil society. Most of these initiatives have focused on the spending side of the budget, but a few countries have looked at the revenue side as well.
Australia was the first country to formally incorporate gender budgeting by developing countries the concept of a woman's budget. South Africa followed suit in 1995 as a part of its push to eliminate inequalities following the end of apartheid. One tangible result in South Africa was the elimination of gender discrimination from the personal income tax, where some women were taxed more heavily than men with equivalent income. In European Union, gender equality has long been a priority, with gender-budgeting initiatives under way in a number of countries, including in Scandinavia and Spain. Other initiatives include the Women's budget Group in the United Kingdom, which comments on the fiscal policies of each annual budget. In India, researchers have assessed the adequacy of budgetary programs to address women's needs and reduce gender disparities. In Mexico, non-governmental organisations have worked with federal and state governments combine solid academic analysis with advocacy for gender equality and poverty reduction within the budgetary context and in Rwanda gender-budgeting initiatives is used to inform the national debate about policy and allocation of the resources.
Summary
We conclude Women face discrimination at all levels in all Countries. In many cases, such policies are needed that policies that remove gender-specific barriers, thus ensuring a more level playing field for males and females. This requires budgetary expenditures to scale up policies and monitor progress in attaining targets set for MDGs. Gender budgeting should be incorporated into standard budget processes so that it becomes fully institutionalised as individual initiatives adopted with enthusiasm may not be sustained. The gender budgeting should cover both spending and revenue. Government should monitor the progress of all MDGs regularly so that we achieve the targets.
References
Janet Stotsky, Janet G. (2007) “Why using the Budget to Empower Women makes good Economic Sense”. F&D, June.
Buvinic, Mayra and Elizabeth, M. King, (2007) “Smart Economics” F&D, June.
World Bank, (2005), World Development Report- 2006, Equity & Development, OUP, New York.
UNESCO, (2006) “Global Monitoring Report: Strong foundation:, Early Childhood Education”, Paris.
[1] World Bank (2001) Engendering Development: Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources and Voice, Oxford University Press, New York, and also Klasen, Stephan (2007) Pro-Poor Growth and Gender Inequality: Insights from new Research, Poverty in Focus, International Poverty Centre, March, pp 5-7.
