The world has failed to meet the goal of eliminating gender disparities in basic education by the year 2005, according to the Global Monitoring Report 2008 data. The percentage of women in the global illiterate population has remained steady at 63-64 percent over the past 20 years even as the overall number of illiterates decreased.

At the International Conference on Achieving Literacy for All (New Delhi, 2013), participants from several countries reported different steps that have been taken to close the gender gap in adult literacy. India, the host country of the Conference, initiated the five-year Saakshar Bharat initiative in 2009 with a special focus on women. It is planned that, out of the total target of 70 million beneficiaries, 60 million will be women. The strategy to link literacy with income-generating activities has given rural women more decision making authority. However, focus on gender-equity enabled investments is alarmingly lagging. The socio-cultural contexts in which women operate limit their active presence in any literacy programme. Throughout much of the world, women’s equality is undermined by historical imbalances in decision making power and access to resources, rights, and entitlements.

There is, therefore, an urgent need to influence policies at national, sub-national and local levels. Experience indicates that there are no quick fixes. Public spending on education is intended to benefit the whole populace equally. However, when resources are limited, girls are usually the ones excluded. It is commonly observed that at the household level girls are the last to get their share in terms of opportunity to schooling and, similarly, expenditure on adult women literacy becomes a remote possibility. Studies show that improving education finance is not only a matter of increasing investment. To a large extent, it is also a matter of budget allocations that permit policies to be implemented in a way that promotes equity at all levels.

Even though girls perform remarkably better as compared to boys in high school, later on the story changes. Their proportion gets shrunk and if one does the root cause analysis of the causal factors, the mind set behind them becomes apparent. ‘Spending on girls’ education is like watering a plant in a neighbour’s courtyard is a common saying which glaringly points towards the underlying mindset. According to the Global Monitoring Report 2008 data, the world has failed to meet the goal of eliminating gender disparities in basic education by the year 2005.

Afghanistan has also adopted the target of 60 per cent female learners in literacy programmes. In Nigeria, under the National Framework on Girls’ and Women’s Education, innovative women’s entrepreneur-ship and skills acquisition programmes have been set up. Similar to India, the rural-urban divide is a major issue in Nepal, and serves to deepen existing gender disparities. The strategy to link literacy with income-generating activities has given rural women more decision making control. Following a similar rationale, literacy programmes combined with micro-credit systems have helped to empower women in Sri Lanka. q

Alka Srivastava
asrivastava@devalt.org

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