This Friday, we mark the 23rd International Day of the Girl Child. The day is dedicated to recognising the challenges that girls face around the world and emphasising the importance of their rights and empowerment. We reflect on the progress towards women’s empowerment in the run-up to the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.
In July 2023, Usawa Agenda collected schooling status data on children aged 4–15 across the country and assessed those aged 6–15 years on foundational literacy and numeracy. We also collected data on school-level factors of performance in national examinations from secondary schools.
From these datasets, we recently released gender equality in and through education report, which shows higher enrolment among girls than boys at primary level. And that, indeed, at the foundational level, girls are outperforming boys. These are milestones worthy of celebration, but should not blur our focus. At secondary level, the reverse happens, girls underperform boys and relatively, girl schools are under-resourced, especially with respect to learning facilities in sciences.
Personal development
Our report has triggered conversations, mostly questioning whether society has over-emphasised girls’ education to the detriment of boys. This is a valid question; however, it is poison-laden. Let’s first address its validity: gender equality means attaining the state of affairs where one’s gender doesn’t determine what they can achieve in life by removing all barriers to personal development of both boys and girls.
It means providing opportunities for all people regardless of gender to make their best contribution to their societies. This far, the question of too much focus on girls, including the privileged ones, to the detriment of especially underprivileged boys, is valid. However, if canvassed through the usual blinkers, the question can embolden the latent anti-gender equality forces. Marking this day, which celebrates girls’ vision for the future, let’s remember the fact that getting them into school is a partial solution.
They need access to gender-transformative education, which is still hindered by multiple home and school factors. Achievement of gender equality in and through education requires sustained focus on the goal to reach the desired national and global steady states. This must become the focal point of all women’s empowerment efforts. Educational policy and institutions, as currently established, neither seek to transform gender relations nor reckon with patriarchally inclined pedagogic idiosyncrasies that undermine girls’ empowerment through education.
Barriers
Today, we highlight barriers in the school system and the ecosystem that cloud girls’ vision of the future. School curricula, learning materials and pedagogic approaches remain steeped in anti gender equality stereotypes. In Kenya, the teaching profession is gendered by ranks: over 80 per cent of early childhood development education teachers are women; 56 per cent of primary school teachers are women; and only 42 per cent of secondary school teachers are women.
Men, however, dominate school management with 67 per cent of school heads and 84 per cent of Boards of Management chairpersons being men at all levels. The social ecosystem on its part is replete with patriarchal gender norms. The school and social environment thus remain insidiously inimical to women’s empowerment.
We invite education actors at the community, national and global levels to coordinate and focus their efforts and investments to addressing the twin issues: gender-blind education systems and patriarchal societal gender norms.
Only sustained joint effort can move the needle in this direction, unfetter girls’ access to gender-transformative education and expand the horizon for them to envision a brighter future for themselves and their societies.
Ms Onsomu is senior programmes officer, Mr Toskin is communications officer, while Dr Manyasa is the executive director at Usawa Agenda.
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Publish date : 2024-10-07 21:00:00
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Author : africa-news
Publish date : 2024-10-07 22:59:40
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