Gender and Education for All THE LEAP TO EQUALITY

Chapter - Why are girls still held back?

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Rights to education: what happens outside the school? The most important place for decisions about participation in schooling is the family. It is clear that extreme inequality in enrolments between girls and boys is particularly associated with low overall enrolments and with the incidence of poverty (Box 3.1). Inequality is not determined by poverty, because there are cases of poor countries where parity of enrolments has been achieved, but it appears to be part of the story. Why is this so? In general, inequality in educational participation and outcomes reflects broader inequalities in society. These embrace social norms and customs, which create powerful incentives that guide people’s behaviour, and determine the roles that women and men can have in the family and community. Social norms are embedded in kinship and religious systems that are highly diverse across – and often within – societies. However, such norms can and do change –in response to environmental and economic change and to broader political and social developments. Change can result from deliberate actions of state and civil society groups, leading to reforms in the legislative and institutional framework of society. In these ways, changes in the expectations and incentives that govern human behaviour – including those that affect educational participation and performance – can be achieved. The critically important locus for decision making as regards participation in schooling is the family. It is here that notions of gender relations are transmitted from one generation to the next. This happens implicitly via the gender roles that members of the household themselves fulfil, and explicitly by consequence of the gender frameworks within which children of each sex are brought up. Households allocate time for different activities among their members, and they also allocate resources – for consumption, savings and investment, including those associated with the formation of human capital – between each of them. As indicated above, decisions made by households are influenced by the broad social and institutional framework of custom and opportunity in which they are located. Nevertheless, changing the factors that affect household constraints, opportunities and incentives is a critically important means of influencing their decision-making. These issues are explored below.

In households, who decides? Countries with strong cultural preference for sons usually have the greatest gender inequalities. The main ways in which children spend their time, and the amount of resources to which they have access, are determined by the households in which they live. The broad parameters for household behaviour are set by the social and institutional framework of each society. However, within that context, a key question is whether households make decisions in ways which balance the relative needs and interests of each of their individual members, or whether they do not. Traditionally it was thought they did. Economic and social policy proceeded as if households had a single set of preferences. The ways in which household resources, work obligations and opportunities for leisure were allocated among household members were not thought to be important. According to this ‘unitary’ model, it was taken as given, for example, that changes in the balance of expenditure would be consistent, not necessarily with an equal distribution of resources, but at least with maximizing household welfare, however defined (Becker, 1965). Yet concern about subgroups within households – such as women or children – invites the question of whether the distribution of power within the household results in some of its members having a less than equal share of its joint resources. In short, do women or girls have a tougher time than men or boys, in part because their influence over decision-making in the household is usually weaker? Recent theoretical and empirical work shows that this is so. It appears that resource allocation decisions within households are inconsistent with the ‘unitary’ household model. In particular, additional income accruing to different household members has different implications for household expenditure patterns. Women seem to spend more on education, health and household services than do men. Thus the evidence against income and labour pooling and against family altruism is strong (Hoddinott et al., 1997) and an approach premised on bargaining within households better captures the reality. From private to public sphere While households are not a collection of individuals co-operating in the interests of maximizing economic gains (Kabeer, 2001), neither are they a group of people acting as if they were single individuals. Households are, by and large, made up of families, and hence they are the sites of particular kinds of social relationships, which are very distinct from other relationships in any society. Institutional approaches that take account of this have been used to elucidate the process of household decision-making (Todaro and Fapohunda, 1988; Kabeer, 1994, 2000; Cain, 1984; Whitehead, 1981; Whitehead and Kabeer, 2000; Folbre, 1994). Within such an approach, ‘households’ and other domestic arrangements are seen as institutional responses to the need for long-term stable relationships. These are based on meeting the basic survival needs of members, bearing and raising children and coping with illness, disability and old age in a world characterized by uncertainty (Kabeer, 1994, Chap. 5). Powerful ideologies of family and kinship bind household members to each other through socially sanctioned ‘implicit contracts’. These ideologies carry mutual claims and obligations in ways that are often highly unequal. They are not ‘invented’ by individual households; they are embedded in wider social norms and values and hence exercise an influence that goes beyond (but serves to buttress) the authority of senior individuals within the household (Whitehead, 1981). Households take diverse forms across the world. One important principle of difference relates to gender relations.2 Most societies observe some gender division of labour within the home, with women taking primary responsibility for caring for the family, whereas men tend to be associated with the work outside the home, often on a paid basis. This division of labour goes some way towards explaining the gender inequalities in human capabilities observed in many nations. All-round dependence However, societies differ considerably in the extent to which women also participate in paid work outside the home: the most marked gender inequalities are generally found in societies where women are confined to the home and denied the possibility of participating in work outside it (Townsend and Momsen, 1987; Kabeer, 2003a; Sen, 1990). These restrictions tend to be associated with other values and practices that further inhibit women’s life chances, including patrilineal principles of inheritance and descent, where family line and property is transmitted through men; patriarchal structures of authority, where families are tightly knit and where most resources are under the control of the senior male; and patri-local systems of marriage requiring women to be absorbed into their husbands’ families after marriage, distancing them from the support of their natal families. The restrictions on women’s movements in the public domain in such societies reflect the importance attached to the biological paternity of children and the need to control women’s sexuality. Denied access to resources of their own and restricted in their ability to provide for themselves, women tend to be regarded as economic dependents in such societies. Son preference Such societies have been – and many continue to be – characterized by marked son-preference and by discrimination against daughters from the early years of life. This occurs to such an extent that such societies often have excess levels of female mortality and a higher proportion of men to women in the population than is considered ‘standard’ in the rest of the world (Kabeer, 2003b). Countries in which there is strong cultural preference for sons also tend to have the greatest levels of gender inequalities (UNIFEM, 2002, p. 13). These societies exhibit ‘extreme’ forms of patriarchy. They are to be found in countries of North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia (Pakistan, much of India and Bangladesh) and East Asia (China, Republic of Korea, Taiwan). Gender inequalities in education in such societies are simply one aspect of a generalized and systematic discrimination against women and girls. Although other parts of the world are also characterized by a gender division of domestic labour, they do not exercise the same restrictions on women’s ability to participate in the wider economy – even though such participation may be onerous, given women’s other domestic responsibilities. Thus while gender inequalities exist in these societies, they have not taken the extreme, life-threatening forms noted above. In these ways, differences in gender relations within and outside the household reflect society wide norms, values and practices rather than privately determined choices. To that extent they change only slowly in response to changes in individual or household circumstances. At the same time, they are not immutable. Like other aspects of social behaviour, they have often shown evidence of change over time, with both positive and negative outcomes for women. Acting on social and economic forces Thus it is the complexity of interaction between social norms and values and broader economic change which explains the diversity of enrolment outcomes illustrated in Figures 3.1 to 3.3 (see Box 3.1). The mechanisms that are capable of delivering greater equality are not necessarily put in place by economic growth – or by income growth at the household level – alone. Other social forces are of equal significance, as demonstrated later in this report. 2. Indeed, while absolute levels of education across the world are closely associated with levels of economic development, it is impossible to explain observed patterns of gender inequality in education without some reference to patterns of gender relations prevailing in different contexts (Kabeer, 2003a).

Child labour: a major brake on schooling One of the commonest reasons for children not attending school is that their families need them to work. Whether all children will be sent to school depends on the extent to which households continue to see themselves as requiring the labour of their children in order to achieve tolerable levels of welfare. Owing to the importance of child labour as a major constraint on school participation – with a strongly differentiated impact on girls and boys – this factor needs prominent attention in policy design. Figures only tell part of the story One of the commonest reasons for children not attending school is that their families need them to work. Sometimes this work is paid, but mostly it is unpaid and takes place within the householdor on the family farm. Global estimates of the incidence of work performed by children are available – as for adults – only for work leading to a marketable output. This includes waged work, but also regular work done on a household farm or enterprise. People engaged in these economic activities are conventionally described as being economically active and, when they are children, as being child labourers. Most recent estimates suggest that about 18% of children aged 5–14 are economically active in those ways, amounting to some 211 million children in 2000 ( Table 3.1), roughly half of whom were girls. About 25 million of these children were estimated to be involved in work for their families which was consistent with their development. But some 186 million of them were involved in some form of child labour which was harmful to their development. Although many of these child labourers work for only a few hours per week, more than half of them are estimated to be working full time on the production of marketable output (ILO, 2002a). There are no reliable global estimates for the number of children engaged in domestic chores and other household work that does not lead to marketable output. It is safe to assume, however, that the number of such children is several times greater than those formally described as being ‘economically active’ – and thus as comprising ‘child labour’ – and that the girls who find themselves in this category considerably outnumber the boys. There are dramatic differences in the incidence of child labour by region. Africa has the highest incidence (41%) while Asia and Latin America have 21% and 17%, respectively. Asia, being more population-dense, has the largest number of child labourers. Of children in work, it is estimated that 61% are in Asia (128 million), 32% in Africa (68 million) and 7% (15 million) in Latin America. While the incidence of child labour in Asia and Latin America has witnessed a secular decline in the post-war era, this is not the case in sub-Saharan Africa. There, fertility remains high and per capita resources for education have often been in decline. Slow or negative economic growth, famine and disease, war and conflict and the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa have all contributed further to keeping the incidence of child labour high. Parents: the main employer The vast majority of working children – i.e. those helping to produce marketable output – in developing countries are engaged in agricultural work, typically on family-run farms.3 Accordingly, the work participation rates of children tend to be higher in rural than in urban areas. Child work in export-sector factories, many of which are in urban locations, is thus by no means the general case of child labour. Although in Latin America and Asia, a small but significant fraction of children work outside the household for a wage, this is much less common in Africa, where wage labour markets are more incipient. Parents are, therefore, the main employers of children, and affecting their circumstances and attitudes is the major challenge in reducing child labour. Second, and contrary to what is often assumed, child labour is not the inverse of school attendance. Many children from all developing regions, but especially African children, combine working on family-run farms and enterprises with attending school.4 Inevitably, however, there is a trade-off between work participation and school attendance in such circumstances.5 Achievement is also affected: the quality of the school experience for working children is undermined not only by their more irregular attendance, but also by their ability to apply themselves while at school being reduced by their responsibilities outside it.6 Third, most countries exhibit large gender differentials in child labour-force participation. In Africa and Asia, the educational participation and attainment of girls tends to be less than that of boys. However, the data on child labour do not always show girls as being more heavily engaged in work than boys because they are often more likely than boys to be classed as ‘inactive’. This probably corresponds to their having a greater engagement in household chores, which is not conventionally counted as economic activity.7 Often the poverty of households is a distinguishing characteristic – with those supplying boy labourers being on average poorer than those supplying girl labourers. In rural Pakistan, for example, it appears that boys take wage work only when their income contribution is necessary to household subsistence, whereas girls take wage work even when the household could survive without the money (Bhalotra, 2000). A broad interpretation of the empirical literature suggests that the proportions in work and out of school are larger for girls than for boys in Asia, the proportion in work but not necessarily the proportion out of school is larger for boys than for girls in Latin America, and the proportions of boys and girls in work are roughly similar in most parts of Africa, although the girls who are out of school comprise a significant majority. Girls and domestic work In all these cases there is strong gender segmentation in occupations. This is particularly so if domestic labour is included. Even where their labour participation rates are similar, boys and girls often specialize in different sorts of work. For example, in Ethiopia, Guinea and the United Republic of Tanzania, girls specialize in domestic work, such as looking after siblings, preparing and cooking food, cleaning the house and fetching water and firewood. Boys, on the other hand, are mainly involved in working on the family farm, looking after livestock and engaging in income-earning activities. In terms of the range and frequency of work activities practised in these three countries, including domestic chores, girls help their families more than boys (Colclough et al., 2003, pp. 136–7; Cockburn, 2001b). In rural Pakistan, girls in waged work are mainly engaged in seasonal agricultural work, whereas boys in waged work are primarily engaged in the non-agricultural sector (Bhalotra, 2000). Proxy evidence also exists from household surveys for many developing countries, which find that a substantial fraction of children are neither in work nor in school. This fraction is typically larger for girls than for boys – an indication that ‘doing nothing’, as reported by such surveys will, in many cases, correspond to doing housework. Other school-based surveys for a large number of countries show that household and domestic work is a significant reason for non-attendance, and more so for girls than for boys. In Ethiopia and Guinea, between one quarter and one-third of school drop-outs surveyed indicated that their need to earn money or to work at home on the family farm were the main reasons for leaving school early. In both countries the girls who dropped out for these reasons did so mainly in order to help the family in the home, whereas the boys who did so cited work on the family farm, or earning money as having been their main intent (Colclough et al., 2003). Finally, the history and geography of child labour show that its incidence falls as economic development proceeds.8 Its existence is undoubtedly partly a result of poverty. However, the beneficial impact of increased wealth or income may often be rather indirect. In many cases those at school are on average from richer households than school drop-outs who, in turn, are from better-off backgrounds than those children who have never been enrolled.9 On the other hand, household surveys often suggest that the relationship between income and child labour at the household level is weak and, related to this, surveys often reveal a considerable prevalence of child labour among households that are not subsistence poor (Andvig, 1999; Bhalotra and Tzannatos, 2002; Brown et al., 2003). Furthermore, the ownership of productive assets such as land sometimes increases child labour, owing to the increased need for household labour for those with larger land holdings.10 This needs further investigation in a broader range of contexts, because the effectiveness of income transfer programmes aimed at reducing child labour is dependent on parents being altruistic – in the sense that those having the choice would not want their children to work. Targeting mothers One of the explanations for the indirect relationship between income and child labour may be – as discussed above – that women and men have different preferences and power within households. A growing literature argues that the relative power of women in deciding how to spend household resources (including deciding on the level of investment in schooling) increases with their earning power. Recent work has shown that the incidence of child labour can be expected to be lowest where power is equally divided between husbands and wives (Basu, 2001). Data from Indonesia suggest that children work less and study more in households where the mother has more influence in decision-making (Galasso, 1999). Other studies allow for the possibility that child workers are independent bargainers who influence the allocation of resources within the household. In rural Pakistan, for example, ignoring work status, no gender differential is apparent in the allocation of resources. However, once work status is allowed for, it is found that working boys acquire a larger share of household resources such as food and child-specific goods than do non-working (or dependent) boys. In contrast, working does not bestow any benefit on girls. Although this may reflect differential preferences, it may rather be that dependent girls are as heavily engaged in domestic chores as working girls are in more explicit forms of work. This is in contrast to working boys who may in fact be more active than dependent boys (Bhalotra and Attfield, 1998). In Ethiopia and Guinea, up to a third of school drop-outs said their need to earn money or work on the family farm were their main reasons for leaving school early. 3. This fact emerges from an array of household survey data from developing countries including the World Bank Living Standards Measurement Surveys (LSMS) and the International Labour Organization’s SIMPOC Surveys. Many authors report the higher incidence of rural as compared with urban work and of household-based as opposed to market work. For partial surveys of the empirical research see Andvig (1999), Bhalotra and Tzannatos (2002), Edmonds (2003). A comparison of African and Asian data is made, using the cases of Ghana and Pakistan, in Bhalotra and Heady (2001). 4. Relevant data for India are presented in Cigno and Rosati (2002) (where, exceptionally, the fraction of ‘idle’ children is greater among boys than girls), for Nepal and Viet Nam in Edmonds (2003), for Ethiopia in Cockburn (2002) and for Ghana and Pakistan in Bhalotra and Heady (2001). 5. See, for example, Boozer and Suri (2001), for Ghana. 6. This is shown, for Ghana, in Heady (2003) and discussed, for Ethiopia, in Cockburn (2001b). 7. For these reasons many empirical studies investigating the effects of gender produce mixed results. See Psacharopoulos (1997), Alessie et al. (1992), Canagarajah and Coulombe (1997) and DeTray (1983) where data for boys and girls are pooled, and a gender dummy variable is introduced. In general, significant gender effects are found where separate models for girls and boys are estimated [e.g. Nielsen (1998), Ilahi (1999), Cockburn (2001a), Ray (2000), Bhalotra (2000, 2001), Bhalotra and Heady (2000)] or when surveys explicitly include domestic chores alongside work aimed at producing marketable output. 8. This is evident from aggregate statistics on child labour presented by country and year (see ILO, 2002). Using ross-country data for eighty three rich and poor countries, Dessy and Vencatachellum (2003) find a negative correlation of child labour and the log of per capita GDP (at purchasing power parity). (They also find a positive relation of child labour incidence and the log of the Gini index of inequality.) 9. In Ethiopia and Guinea, increases in household wealth improve the chances of all children’s school attendance, but significantly more so for girls than for boys. See Rose and Al-Samarrai (2001); Tembon and Al-Samarrai (1999). 10. Bhalotra and Heady (2000) illustrate this argument with a theoretical model, and present evidence from rural Ghana and Pakistan. See also Cockburn (2001a) and Skoufias (1993).

In the name of tradition Social norms play a significant role in explaining why and how gender differentiation occurs, how it becomes legitimized through divisions of labour between men and women, and how this division of labour results in the contributions of girls and boys being valued differently. Norms of female dependence on males are institutionalized through a range of social mechanisms so that they come to appear natural and immutable. These norms are usually stubborn, but they can be challenged through pro-active measures. Contrary to the assumptions of many parents, girls will go to great lengths to attend school (see Box 3.3). Once there, they work hard and often outperform boys in their studies, as Chapter 2 demonstrates. However, many parents recognize that existing social conditions are often unsupportive of those girls and women who offend social norms. Some Ethiopian fathers, for example, noted that more educated girls face problems because they cannot find a husband or employment opportunities; they will get older, have to stay with their parents and bring shame upon the family; thus the only options are for educated girls to migrate to bigger towns, often to lead a miserable life working as house servants or even prostitutes (Colclough et al., 2003). Early marriage as a form of insurance Where female autonomy is considered unstable or risky, early marriage is used as a means of securing daughters’ futures. This massively impedes the educational progress of girls in many countries. Data from India for 1996 show that 38% of girls aged 15–19 were married.11 In rural areas of Albania and Tajikistan it is not uncommon for poor families to endorse the early marriage of girls to lighten the family’s economic burden. In these circumstances, early marriage (at age 15 or 16) becomes a reason to leave school (Magno et al., 2002). Here, and in the other countries shown in Table 3.2, girls are significantly more likely to be married than their male peers. Although it is well known that marriage of children and adolescents before the age of 18 is very common in some parts of the world, its overall prevalence is difficult to assess. Many such marriages are not registered. Small-scale studies suggest, however, that national data significantly underestimate its prevalence. For example, in 1998, in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, 14% of girls between the ages of 10 and 14 were already married. In Nepal, 40% of girls are married by the time they are 15. In Ethiopia and in some countries in West Africa, marriage at 7 or 8 is not uncommon, although in some cases girls are reported to be able to carry on their education even after moving to their inlaws’ household (Rose, 2003a). Even boys marry under pressure from parents, earlier than they would wish although not as early as girls (Save the Children, 2003). In themselves, changes to the legal age of marriage are unlikely to alter local practices if underlying conditions are not changed. For example, despite a recent policy change in Ethiopia, whereby the minimum official age of marriage for girls became 18, in some parts of the country girls are still married before the age of 10. Moreover, in some areas girls are not infrequently ‘kidnapped’ on their way to school, or even from within the school compound itself, by the parents of boys, for marriage to their sons. Cognisant of this risk, some parents refuse to send their daughters to school. Promoting the importance of girls’ education through campaigns, role models, improving conditions of safety and security for girls and working directly with adolescent girls to strengthen their voice are all important measures to help communities to allow girls to complete their education. Girls are sometimes kidnapped’ on their way to or even at school by parents for marriage to their sons. Cultural practices and rites of passage A more complex set of issues affecting girls’ education are traditional practices that mark adolescence and the rites of passage. Box 3.4 discusses some of those that continue, in the name of religion or culture, to prevent both boys and girls from enjoying rights and freedoms associated with childhood. Many of these are linked to the construction of sexuality of young boys and girls, and in most cases result in restrictions being placed particularly on the freedom of girls to enjoy their right to education. Some cultural practices inadvertently affect the incentives to educate girls. For example, the practice of bride price or lobola in many parts of southern Africa, whereby educated girls may attract a higher bride price, can serve as a powerful incentive for some parents to educate their daughters (SADC, 1999). In contrast, the practice of dowry in India often acts as a depressant on investments in a daughter, be it their education or health, by emphasizing the importance of girls’ eligibility for marriage to the exclusion of all other considerations of personhood (Palriwala, 2003). However, where education is seen as improving the prospects for girls in the marriage market, it may be used purely as a means to that end (Jeffery and Basu, 1996; Jeffery et al., 2003). Adolescence and pregnancy Social pressures on girls and boys are particularly strong during their puberty and the development of adolescent sexuality. In many countries, adolescent pregnancy, either within or outside marriage, almost always results in the discontinuation of a girl’s schooling. In both Malawi and Chile, pregnancy was often mentioned as the most important reason for girls leaving school early, although statistical evidence is sparse (Kadzamira and Chibwana, 2000; Avalos, 2003). In the United Republic of Tanzania, the strong enforcing of compulsory education has meant that early marriage is not an important factor affecting girls, but pregnancy was cited as an important reason for girls dropping out of school. In addition, the high costs of schooling and the inability of poorer girls to buy school uniforms also may encourage them to seek sexual relationships with older men who can provide them with money. Data compiled by the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE, 1994) in eastern and southern Africa indicate that the school careers of many girls are cut short because they are expelled from school on becoming pregnant. Pre-marital pregnancy among girls is stigmatized in African communities even though its determining factors remain unaddressed. In Guinea and Malawi, where girls are now encouraged to return to school after pregnancy, few girls do so, partly because of parental fears that they would become pregnant again, and partly because girls are afraid of ridicule (Colclough et al., 2003). Sexual taboos A recent series of studies about management of puberty in primary schools in Uganda, Kenya and Zimbabwe concluded that the current management of sexual maturation within the primary system fails to meet the needs of children, but especially those of girls. In particular, children were denied: accessible and accurate information about the process of sexual maturation; essential facilities to ensure that children, especially girls, are not excluded from participation because of their maturing bodies; an appropriate value system through which boys and girls can be guided into safe and healthy adulthood. The studies document the ways in which poor management of sexual maturation has had a detrimental impact on children’s acquisition of basic learning competencies, and how girls who experienced menstruation without adequate preparation, or facilities, were regularly absent or even dropped out of primary school (Kasente, 2003). 11. These comprised 46% of those in rural areas and 22% of those in urban centres.