WOMENS EDUCATION A quiet revolution

Press, 29 July 1976, Page 12

WOMENS EDUCATION A quiet revolution

By PATRICIA McGRATH, for the Worldwatch Institute

Fifty years ago there were only 43 Egyptian girls attending secondary school; by 1971 there were half a million. Since 1950. the female share of university enrolments has quadrupled in Pakistan and quintupled in Thailand. These figures represent only the tip of the iceberg. Improvements in the educational status of Third World women at the lower rungs of the academic ladder are even more significant and broadly based. More of the world’s women can now read and write than ever before. For many women, literacy has become a door into the twentieth century, a means of achieving social mobility and panicipating in the affairs of both their own communities and the wider world. In some countries, the literacy differences between older and younger female age groups have become striking. Women clearly have farther to go than men in the elimination of illiteracy, but they are making progress. Today, free and compulsory primary education for both sexes is a goal, if not already an actual policy, of almost every government. Even in the conservative Moslem society of Saudi Arabia, King Faisal opened schools for girls more than a decade ago, though a show of force was thought necessary to quell resistance to the idea. In almost every country

for which statistics are available, female access to primary education has improved greatly, with enrolments swelling from a mere trickle to near parity in many areas of the globe. Because primary education is a prerequisite for further educational attainment, which in turn strongly influences eligibility for independent roles in adult society, increased female ; primary school enrolments ■ since the Second World War represent a flying wedge I into the barriers that block women’s achievement and an ; opening to the rights and prerogatives that lie beyond. The international post-war expansion of school systems ' and student populations has also extended to the secon- ’ dary level. As the total number of secondary students has increased so, too, has the proportion of female students in some areas. In most 'leases, the number of ’ girls has increased more rapidly , than that of boys. " In many African, Asian, ' and Latin American coun- ; tries, the number of female ' university students has risen ! quickly from an initially low . level. In Libya, the female , ratio at the university level ’ has risen from a meagre 2 per cent in 1960 to 11 per i cent in 1970. ■ In a number of African countries, female university ’ enrolments have multiplied i from seven to 16 times, i Though women still comI prise only a quarter to a third of total university enr rolment in most of the Third . World, their numbers are ini creasing. The availability of higher education to women in any given country does not always correspond closely with that country’s level of economic development. The Philippines and Thailand, though less economically developed than most Western nations, have a higher per centage of female enrolment in their universities than do the nations of Europe. Since higher education is the training ground for persons who will assume leadership positions, women’s gains at the university level should have even greater implications for their roles in society than did earlier gains at the primary and secondary school levels. Changes in women’s actions and expectations tend to show up first and most markedly among the collegeeducated. Highly-trained women, who demand equal advancement and opportunity in areas traditionally monopolised by men, are the most sorely conscious of the disadvantages that afflict their sex. Women college graduates are the first to question the “Noah’s Ark” configuration of the world, in which all animals must be paired. They are the first to experiment with new lifestyles,

and are the most likely to dedicate themselves to a professional career. They have the lowest average number of children, sometimes electing to remain unmarried and child free. They display the most active interest in women’s rights, and present the most poignant challenge to traditional male-female role stereotypes. In almost every country, educated women have fewer children, healthier and better - educated children, than do uneducated women. Educated women are more favourably disposed to family planning because they understand it, and because they often want to hold on to their jobs. In Turkey and Egypt, the fertility level decreases as women’s educational achievement rises, with the average parity of university degree holders between onehalf (Egypt) and one-third (Turkey) that of illiterate women. Educated women also achieve higher labour-force participation rates, higher productivity, and higher earnings, probably because the types of employment available to them confer sufficient financial return, job satisfaction, and status to motivate them to combine motherhood with a career. In Turkey, only 3 per cent of illiterate women work in non-farm jobs, compared to 70 per cent of university-! trained women. The same situation exists in Egypt and j many other developing coun-i tries. Though the relationship between education and employment is not linear, as these statistics may suggest, the correlation is well substantiated. Such fertility and economic activity rates clearly have desirable implications for women’s status in the family —for their ability to share in decision-making about children’s schooling and about family finances, for instance. Education lets women into “the system”; once there, they will surely make a difference. Some education and some measure of economic independence appear to be the foundations for a sense of having a certain control over nature, for planning ahead, for openness to new experience, and for toleration of diversity. Up until now, socially imposed ignorance has been at the root of women’s longstanding inability to control the fundamental conditions of their lives. Recent gains in women’s , literacy, formal schooling, i and participation in the ( teaching profession suggest ] that, while many formidable , inequities remain to be over- . come, the steady advances' in women’s education augur , well fur the emergence of a social order in which the ■ ideas and energies of womeml are fully expressed.!