Education and Gender Equality

Girls' education and gender equality

Several children embrace as they sing a song of friendship and love with their classmates at a school in Nairobi, Kenya.

The drive to ensure gender equality cuts across all UNICEF programmes is key to achieving substantial progress towards the Education for All goals as well as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

However, despite remarkable achievements in many countries over the past years, many girls remain excluded from education. Girls also remain much more vulnerable to gender-based discrimination due to traditional socio-cultural practices such as early marriage and female genital mutilation/cutting. Many are exposed to risks of sexual abuse and harassment. As a result of these and other factors, including poverty, in countries such as Angola, Comoros, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Mozambique, the enrolment rate of girls in primary school is still lower than that of boys, while in secondary and tertiary education the figure is significantly lower across the region.

This comes at a time, when girls’ education has proven to be one of the most cost-effective strategies to promote development and economic growth. Studies in many developing countries have shown that educated mothers tend to have healthier and better nourished babies and that they most likely will do everything to have their own children attending school as well, thus breaking the vicious cycle of poverty. Women who went to school often manage to increase the household income by strengthening the output of their families’ agricultural and other economic activities. And they usually have fewer children themselves. Every UNICEF-supported education programme thus includes the promotion of gender equality.

Country	Primary school enrolment ratio (net)		Primary school attendance ratio (net)		Secondary school enrolment ratio		Secondary school attendance ratio
	Male	Female	Male	Female	Male	Female	Male	Female
Angola	-	-	77	75	-	-	21	17
Botswana	98	100	86	88	56	64	36	44
Burundi	86	88	72	70	10	8	8	6
Comoros	91	84	31	31	-	-	10	11
Eritrea	39	34	69	64	32	23	23	21
Ethiopia	86	81	45	45	-	-	30	23
Kenya	83	84	72	75	51	48	40	42
Lesotho	71	76	87	91	22	36	26	40
Madagascar	99	100	76	79	23	24	27	28
Malawi	89	94	76	79	26	24	19	20
Mozambique	93	88	82	80	16	14	21	20
Namibia	88	92	91	93	49	60	47	62
Rwanda	95	97	84	87	-	-	5	5
Somalia	-	-	18	15	-	-	12	8
South Africa	89	90	-	-	-	-	-	-
Swaziland	82	84	83	86	31	26	31	41
Uganda	91	94	83	82	22	21	17	17
Tanzania (United Republic of)	96	97	79	82	-	-	26	24
Zambia	91	94	81	82	-	-	38	36
Zimbabwe	-	-	90	92	-	-	45	45

Source: State of the World's Children (SOWC) 2012, UNICEF

After her mother's death, Nokwanda Mchunu, 12, of South Africa, had to live with her unemployed aunt. In spite of poverty, she has never missed a class. “I want to do well at school,” she said. “My dream is to live a better life.”

UNICEF in Action

The United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI) is a major global effort to boost girls’ education. Launched in 2000 at the World Education Forum in Dakar by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, UNGEI’s goal is to narrow the gender gap in primary and secondary education and to ensure that by 2015, all children regardless of gender will complete primary schooling and have equal access to a quality education that is free of charge.

UNICEF is the lead agency for UNGEI and manages its Secretariat. Other partners such as UNESCO, the World Bank, bilateral donors and NGOs are actively involved in the movement. The initiative has been instrumental in contributing to the development and implementation of strategic reforms in many countries in Eastern and Southern Africa. To date, UNGEI has contributed extensively to enhancing girls’ rights to education across the region, with support from donor agencies such as Norway that provides very significant levels of funding.

Results for children

A number of countries in the region have specific strategies and programmes in place to promote girls’ education:

In 14 countries in Eastern and Southern Africa, UNICEF support to gender audits has helped in assessing the needs of girls in school and addressing the barriers to their education. The gender audits are key activities in deepening the situation analysis of girls and influencing education policy and planning.
UNGEI has helped establish and scale up the Girls’ Education Movement (GEM) and the Girls’ and Boys’ Education Movement (GBEM) in Lesotho, South Africa, Swaziland and Uganda, to mobilize communities to support school retention and completion of girls. Gender training for GEM and GBEM members in all of Eastern and Southern Africa – hosted in Kenya, Malawi and Rwanda – has helped ensure progress towards greater gender mainstreaming in education.
In collaboration with Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE), UNICEF provided technical and financial support to on-going activity of gender responsive teacher training in five countries (Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Ethiopia).
The UNICEF-supported Child-friendly schooling (CFS) framework promotes equality and equity in enrolment and achievement among girls and boys by eliminating gender stereotyping. Gender-sensitive curricula and textbooks as well as separate girls/boys latrines are key vehicles for enhancing gender equality in education. Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa and Tanzania are institutionalizing the CFS model to improve girls’ and boys’ access to quality education.
In South Africa, the Department of Education, with UNICEF support, started the Technogirls Mentorship Programme in 2005. The initiative, which is part of the Girls and Boys Education Movement, helps girls make informed career choices, with an emphasis on science, technology and engineering. Technogirls identifies high achieving 15–18 year old schoolgirls from disadvantaged communities, especially those coming from rural areas. The girls are placed in corporate mentorship and skills development programmes where they also benefit from academic scholarships.

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