We all know that education has never been equal with boys and girls. At one time it was just boys getting educated in schools. Even in America there have been times were education was not equal. Now in America, girls can get the same education as boys, but in some countries that is not the case. In earlier times, it was thought that women getting educated would lose their correct place in society.
In fact, receiving an education in the Victorian Period was considered an “act of nonconformity”. A woman could not fill her preordained place in society if she was wasting her time gaining knowledge. Education was thought to make women discontented with their current status, and possibly even irritated with men. Education for women was thought to disrupt the social balance of the time. On the contrary, the earliest push for Victorian women to become educated was because they were mothers of men and eventually teachers of men. It was not until the twentieth century that women began to desire knowledge for themselves as individuals. -Women’s History Then & Now
In developing countries, it is even harder for girls to get an education. In large parts of Asia and Africa, school fees and the high price of transportation, uniforms, and school books keep millions of girls out of school. With some countries abolishing the school fees that parents have to pay, such as Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania, there has been a rise in enrollment in school for girls. Reducing the distance children must travel to school is also critical because it both cuts down on the time children must spend away from home and alleviates parental concerns for the safety of their children, especially the girls, as they walk to and from school. In some countries, poor families often choose to send boys to school first especially if they cannot afford the school fees for all their children.
Sending girls to school may be clearly beneficial both for the girls themselves and their countries, but in most poor nations it is the parents who make the ultimate choice in schooling. Parents would rather have their daughters working for extra income for the family or just to help with the grueling requirements of life. They may also stay home to care for their ailing parents with HIV/AIDS.
There are also benefits to girls going to school. Those benefits include reducing women’s fertility rates, lowering infant, child, and maternal mortality rates, and increase women’s labor force participation rates and earnings. A girl with an education is more likely to use reliable family planning methods, delay marriage and childbearing, and have fewer and healthier children. Also, women with more formal education are more likely to seek medical care, ensure their children are immunized, be better informed about their children’s nutritional requirements, and adopt better sanitation practices. They also tend to have better knowledge about health care practices. Education has been proven to increase income for wage earners and increase productivity for employers, yielding benefits for the community and society.
Girls education and the promotion of gender equality in education are vital to development, and policies and actions that do not address gender disparities miss critical development opportunities.
While progress on girls education is being made, most experts agree that not enough is being done. Changing policies, like eliminating school fees is part of the answer, but without more money for teachers, buildings and books, millions of children–boys and girls–will be doomed to lives of illiteracy and poverty.
“It’s everybody’s business to get girls into school now because it is their lives and the lives of their children,” said Rima Salah, deputy executive director of UNICEF, at the U.N. panel on girls education, “Education is the most effective investment for development.” -Women in Higher Education
Here are the links for the information used: http://www.wihe.com/$spindb.query.showwhat2.wihe.35 http://www.globalenvision.org http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~ulrich/femhist/education.shtml http://web.worldbank.org
