Women's Education: An Overview and Statistics

What is Female Education Inequality?

Equal education is a heavily overlooked aspect when it comes to gender inequality. Nowadays, girls have the same right to education as boys. However, gender inequality in education still exists, especially amongst rural Asian countries. There are traditions and cultures that may object against girls going to school. Thus, their abilities to speak up against this regime are suppressed. Due to the notion that boys have better chances of getting a job and stable salary, poor families often favor boys when investing in education. In some places, schools do not meet the safety, hygiene or sanitation needs of girls. In others, teaching practices are not gender-responsive, hence, result in gender gaps in learning and skills development. Other obstacles to girls getting an education are cost, distance, pregnancy, and gender-based violence.

Statistics and action

Overall statistics have shown how serious the problem of the lack of education has been. Reports from the UN have shown that from 2015 to 2016 the number of girls out of primary school has gone from 32 million to 34 million, and according to TheirWorld, an estimated 15 million girls in poverty may never step foot onto a classroom compared to an estimated 10 million boys. In terms of total numbers, Unicef has said that a total of 132 million girls are out of school, with the majority being upper-secondary aged. That number hasn’t gone down, and as the UN revealed in 2018, only a 6% increase was reported from 2017, and even with that has been counted with those going out of school. Other UN reports show that young women are almost 90% more likely to not be in secondary school compared to boys and that only 34% of girls in extreme poverty will complete primary school. And, in some countries within Africa, 9 out of 10 children won’t be even able to go to school at all. So, what is being done to combat this situation? Unicef has been working to promote girls’ education. They have done things such as removing gender stereotypes from learning materials, addressing distance-related barriers to education, making re-entry policies for young mothers, and adding menstrual hygiene management in schools, and much much more. Other non-profits, such as WomenOne and Bridge International Academies, both pledge to help girls all over the world to also have the same quality education as others.

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Works Cited

“EDUCATE A GIRL. CHANGE THE WORLD.” WomenOne, www.womenone.org/.

“Home.” Bridge International Academies, www.bridgeinternationalacademies.com/.

team, Their News. “Why Girls around the World Are Still Denied an Equal Chance of Education.” Theirworld, Theirworld, 26 July 2017, theirworld.org/news/why-girls-are-still-denied-equal-chance-of-education.

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Writers: Jack, Ella