Making gender equality a reality in education: what will it take?

Achieving gender equality is at the heart of the SDG agenda, and a core principle of GPE 2020, the strategy of the Global Partnership for Education up to 2020. SDG 5 (gender equality) explicitly targets key areas of inequality, and SDG 4 (education) outlines a number of gender equality related-targets. The General Recommendation 36 by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women brings these two sets of targets together, setting out the ambition to achieve gender equality not only in but also through education.

But what does gender equality in and through education look like? How would it be measured? These are questions we and other organizations are grappling with. Let’s review a concrete example.

More girls in school in Malawi, but low completion

Malawi was one of the first countries in Africa to introduce free primary education in 1994. This move led to an enormous expansion of opportunities for all children, most notably the poorest. The policy is credited with a reduction in some marked gender inequalities associated with girls dropping out of primary school and lacking support to enroll at the secondary level.

Statistics now show more girls than boys enrolling in primary school. The Malawi Education Sector Plan has been praised for highlighting issues concerning girls’ access, progression and achievement.

But commentators also note that many girls, particularly from the poorest socio-economic groups, drop out of the higher grades in primary school and do not progress to secondary school.

Only 66 girls for every 100 boys enrolled in secondary education actually complete and graduate. The reasons for drop out are complex, associated with family income and high levels of domestic responsibility.

Discriminatory gender norms remain strong

For example, researchers note authoritarian and often highly gender discriminatory school cultures, with teachers using discipline and ad-hoc guidelines that reflect and reinforce discriminatory gender norms in the society.

Similarly, while National Statistical Office figures indicate that the number of child marriages is decreasing, possibly as a result of the recent Marriage Act (which strengthens legislation to reduce marriage under the age of 18), the practice of child marriage still remains pervasive.

In 2015, almost a quarter (23.5%) of girls and women aged 15-19 years were married in Malawi, and 42% of women aged 20-24 reported they were married before the age of 18. Child marriage is often associated with conservative social, gender and religious norms, which give little scope for the autonomy and decision-making power of adolescent girls.

All of this indicates that a coherent education sector plan should take into account many aspects of gender inequality that may appear beyond the remit of the ministry of education, and require coordinated efforts between different ministries, civil society groups and communities to bring about change.

What information, resources and approaches to measuring gender inequality and equality in education can those involved in education planning draw on?

If gender parity figures do not give us the full picture, what else should we be looking at? Areas in which richer information is needed include, for example, entrenched discriminatory gender and social norms that limit girls’ and women’s right to education, families’ approach in households to organizing work and managing budgets with regard to girls and boys, teachers’ attitudes and dispositions, which may pre-date any formal education they received, issues of school-based gender violence, sexual harassment and coercion, and lack of reproductive rights, which are associated with teenage pregnancy and early marriage.

One project looking into measurement of these broader facets of gender inequality which affect education outcomes is the AGEE (Accountability for Gender Equality in Education) project, an innovative collaboration between academics at universities in the UK, Malawi and South Africa.

The project recognizes how important it is to improve the measuring and monitoring of gender equality in education and to develop a range of tools to document practices that may appear unmeasurable. These, if described, even by proxy measures, may allow for richer insights and better coordination of research to inform sector planning.

The project team is working with UNESCO and other organizations, and through these consultations and discussions has developed two indicator frameworks that look beyond parity in numbers and try to measure gender equality more broadly, both in and through education, for use at the national and international levels.