Global Gender Inequality and Disparity in Education

Shannon Courtney’s article is additionally featured in The Generation’s Spring 2022 Digital Print Edition:Women. Coming June 1st 2022.

Education provides individuals with the tools, skills, and knowledge needed to succeed in a complex and interconnected world. Throughout history, girls have struggled to receive equal access to schools to further their educational goals. Although there have been recent international initiatives and treaties to combat this challenge, there is still a persistent struggle in many countries to provide girls with universal access to education and close the gender enrollment gap. Educating girls contributes to women’s empowerment globally and positively affects the family and communal structures of society through health status, education, and overall socioeconomic prosperity. 

Where Gender Inequality in Education Stands in the Present

In 2007, the Global Education Monitoring Report identified gender equity and women’s empowerment as “requiring greater international attention in order to create sustainable development and increase global growth.”¹ In 2013, the United Nations created the Sustainable Development Goals to achieve societal and global progress through commitments such as cutting poverty, empowering women in education and the workplace, reducing infant mortality, and improving health institutions worldwide. This initiative declares that “every human being, including every child, is entitled to receive an education.”² However, despite the strong legal initiatives and advancements for access to educational institutions for women and girls, societal structures and systems continue to perpetuate disparities and boundaries between women and men. Studies show that although international social and economic policies have prioritized increasing women’s education, they “ignore the harsh impact of structural adjustment especially on poor households where female education may not be of a high priority.”³ The ‘global feminization of poverty’ refers to women disproportionately living in poverty throughout the world without adequate healthcare, food, water, housing, and education. Furthermore, women are denied fundamental rights and access to education, civil rights, and money in developing nations. In 2015, girls’ proportion of children out of school was 52%, specifically in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and the Arab Nations.⁴ Also, two-thirds of global illiterate adults–773 million people–are women, and around 129 million girls are not in school.⁵ Educational inequality for women drastically impedes social and economic prosperity and development within society. 

Why Does the Education Gap Exist?

Although the Sustainable Development Goals assert that educational access is a basic human right for all children worldwide, the current legal pathways to education ignore the social factors such as gender bias, poverty, and violence that enable the global education gap. Gender bias within primary agents of socialization — parents, school, and social institutions — also reinforces messages that affect girls’ perception of their societal roles, labor engagement disparities, and occupational segregation. Education is a vital social institution and equips individuals with skills and tools to carry out different functional roles in society. For example, through socialization, children model their parents’ behavior, actions, and beliefs to develop their education and career goals. More specifically, girls tend to model their mothers and boys tend to do the same with their fathers as they attain their ideas, beliefs, and aspirations.⁶ Thus, if children, especially girls, are being disincentivized by their primary agent of socialization to not attend school or lack educated role models, it can cause a cyclical process of unequal access to formal education. 

Poverty is also a significant factor indicating accessibility to educational institutions for women and girls. For example, the education expenditure in Somalia was .99% in 2017, where only 23% of girls compared to 42% of boys were enrolled in school.⁷ In comparison, the United States has an education expenditure of 5% of the GDP at $700 billion.⁸ Since there is a lack of universally free public education globally, girls may not have equitable access to educational resources compared to boys even within the same household. Moreover, the spread of Covid-19 has had substantial adverse effects on the educational, social, and behavioral development of children. Although it roughly affects more than 90% of the world’s student population, remote learning is scarce in communities facing extreme poverty, failed states, and refugee camps. For example, less than 1/2 of primary and secondary schools in SubSaharan Africa had access to “electricity, the Internet, computers and basic handwashing facilities, key basic services and facilities necessary to ensure a safe and effective learning environment.”⁹

Gender-based violence also impedes girls’ completion of formal education. According to the Global Women’s Institute at George Washington University, an estimated 60 million girls are “sexually assaulted on their way to or at school every year.”¹⁰ This particularly impacts the Sub-Saharan region of Africa which accounts for 50% of the global percentage of children out of school and results in a higher probability of sexual assault than literacy completion for girls.¹¹ For example, in Nigeria, 42% of the primary school age population were out of school.¹² Moreover, 43% of girls in Nigeria are married before 18 years old and 60% have experienced physical, emotional, and sexual violence under 18 years old.¹³ This produces drastic consequences for girls’ mental and physical well-being as well as lower attendance and higher dropout rates. According to the data, this can result in higher probability of sexual assault or child marriage than primary school completion for girls. Moreover, violence against women can cost up to 3.7% of countries’ GDP, “more than double what most governments spend on education.”¹⁴

How Women’s Education Affects the Individual, Household, and Society 

When women achieve educational equality and close the gender enrollment gap in school, it empowers them, creates a fair and just community, and increases societal and economic productivity. On an individual level, education allows women to “be confident, independent, earn self-respect in the society, and unleash their full potential.”¹⁵ Education provides women with social interaction, knowledge, and tools to combat daily challenges, accomplish their professional aspirations, and acquire leadership in the community. A society’s investment in women’s education tends to have positive effects not only for the individual woman but for her family. Educated women tend to marry at a later age, which helps decrease the number of child marriages and health issues within a society. Increasing women’s health education benefits children through improved hygiene, immunization, nutrition, and lower infant and maternal mortality rates.¹⁶ Furthermore, when women have more access to resources such as money and knowledge, they are more likely to spend money on food, health, shelter, and education for their children.¹⁷

Investing in women’s education helps lift entire communities and countries out of poverty through increased workforce participation, higher incomes, and savings. Globally, despite constituting half of the world’s population, women make up only 10-12% of the entire formal workforce.¹⁸ For example, women in Latin America and East Asia consist of 53% and 59% of the labor force participation rate; this is strikingly higher than regions in South Asia and the Middle East with rates of 24 and 20%, respectively.¹⁹ However, through increased education, women are more likely to participate in the workforce, dramatically increasing a society’s economic productivity because women make up half the world’s population. When women’s income increases by 10%, and there is a 35% increase in GDP per capita of any country for every additional year of education for women.²⁰ Thus, educating women improves the quality of the individual women’s lives, family, community, and societal structures. 

Solutions to Combat Gender Inequality in Education Throughout the World 

Although the right to education is ingrained in global government institutions, economics, social, and cultural factors prevent girls accessing education. Therefore, the best solution to increasing women’s education worldwide is to provide social funding, scholarships, and mentorship programs that change the economic barriers of poverty for women to accomplish their professional and educational aspirations. In many societies stricken with absolute poverty, girls do not usually attend school because their families have to pay for them. Instead, parents would rather pay for their son’s education to attend school and have the daughter stay home and help with the household operations, which develops a cyclical womb-to-kitchen pipeline. Thus, scholarship programs would be a beneficial tool for girls to access school affordably and break the cultural expectation of traditional gender roles. For example, a scholarship program in Cambodia that helps girls afford to attend secondary school has increased girls’ school enrollment and attendance by 30%.²¹ In Ghana, a three-year senior high school education roughly costs 70% of the GDP per capita of the country.²² In an experimental study to assess the impact of free secondary education, winners of scholarships were 60% more likely to complete secondary education, receive 1.25 more years of education than non-winners, and 30% enrolled in tertiary education.²³ Although these various social welfare and scholarship programs address the economic barriers, it is crucial that initiatives to combat global educational inequality address the root cultural challenges as well. A consequence of implementing these solutions is that the scholarship program thrives on the support of the community or society on educating girls. If a particular society believes women should stay in the domestic sphere rather than being educated, it can make it difficult to change the social norms and stereotypes of women and receive funding. Therefore mentorship programs with educated women supporting and guiding younger girls within their community could help them feel empowered and encouraged to follow their dreams. For example, Project Kuongoza empowers women and girls across Sub-Saharan Africa and MESA “with STEM, ICT skills and enable them to compete successfully in the global information economy.”²⁴ The program offers a yearly fellowship program  that pairs young girls aged 15-25 with professional women in STEM to help cultivate digital literacy and access untapped labor markets where women are historically underrepresented. 

Women make up half of the world’s population; however, they are robbed of fundamental human rights such as the right to receive education worldwide. Educating girls and women worldwide help solve global issues such as poverty, health, malnutrition, and social and economic development. When women lack educational access and socioeconomic opportunities, it impedes society’s economic growth, further subjugating women to an inferior quality of life. Therefore, a political commitment by countries is essential to raise awareness regarding the importance of women’s education for themselves, the household, and the greater society and create programs to combat educational inequality. Increasing girls’ access to educational opportunities through mentor and scholarship programs will help increase the overall international development of countries. 

Endnotes

1. Leah Jackson. “Educate the women and you change the world: Investing in the education of women is the best investment in a country’s growth and development.” Forum on Public Policy, 2009. Accessed on January 20, 2022, https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ870099
2. Tabreek Somani. “Importance of educating girls for the overall development of society: A global perspective.” Journal of Educational Research and Practice, 2017. Accessed on January 20, 2022, https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/jerap/vol7/iss1/10/
3. Shailaja Fennell and Madeleine Arnot. “Gender education and equality in a global context:Conceptual frameworks and policy perspectives.” Routledge, 2007. Accessed on January 15, 2022, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203939598
4. Tabreek Somani.. “Importance of educating girls for the overall development of society: A global perspective.” Journal of Educational Research and Practice, 2017. Accessed on January 20, 2022, https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/jerap/vol7/iss1/10/
5. World Bank. “Girls’ Education.” 2021. Accessed on January 21, 2022. https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/girlseducation#1
6. Buchmann, C., DiPrete, T., & McDaniel, A. “Gender inequalities in education.” Annual Review of Sociology, 2008. https://www.jstor.org/stable/29737793
7. UNDP Country Office for Somalia. “Gender in Somalia” August 27, 2014. Accessed February 19, 2022. https://www.undp.org/content/dam/somalia/docs/Project_Documents/Womens_Empowerment/Gender%20in%20Somalia%20FINAL1.pdf
8. Mack DeGeurin. “The US spends more on education than any other country, but students lag behind academically. Here’s how much other countries spend and how well their students perform.” Insider, 2019. Accessed on January 25, 2022, https://www.insider.com/how-much-countries
9. United Nations Sustainable Development. “Goal 4.” Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2021. Accessed on March 1, 2022, https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal4
10. The Global Women’s Institute. “School-Based Interventions to Prevent Violence Against Women & Girls.” The George Washington University. Accessed on January 21, 2022, https://globalwomensinstitute.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs1356/f/downloads/Evidence%20Brief-%20School-Based%20Interventions%20to%20Prevent%20Violence%20Against%20Women%20and%20Girls.pdf
11. UNESCO Institute for Statistics. “Reaching out-of-school children is crucial for development.” UNESCO, 2012. Accessed on January 25, 2022, https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000216519
12. Ibid.
13.  Girls Not Brides. “Nigeria” Accessed on February 10, 2022, https://atlas.girlsnotbrides.org/map/nigeria/
14. Caren Grown & Diana J. Arango. “Taking the fight against gender-based violence to schools” World Bank, 2020. Accessed on January 21, 2022, https://blogs.worldbank.org/voices/taking-fight-against-gender-based-violence-schools
15. Tabreek Somani. “Importance of educating girls for the overall development of society: A global perspective.” Journal of Educational Research and Practice, 2017. Accessed on January 20, 2022, https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/jerap/vol7/iss1/10/
16. Leah Jackson. “Educate the women and you change the world: Investing in the education of women is the best investment in a country’s growth and development.” Forum on Public Policy, 2009. Accessed on January 20, 2022, https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ870099
17. Ibid.
18. Tabreek Somani. “Importance of educating girls for the overall development of society: A global perspective.” Journal of Educational Research and Practice, 2017. Accessed on January 20, 2022, https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/jerap/vol7/iss1/10/
19. World Bank. “Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+).” 2021. Accessed on January 25, 2022, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS
20. Tabreek Somani. “Importance of educating girls for the overall development of society: A global perspective.” Journal of Educational Research and Practice, 2017. Accessed on January 20, 2022, https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/jerap/vol7/iss1/10/
21. Leah Jackson. “Educate the women and you change the world: Investing in the education of women is the best investment in a country’s growth and development.” Forum on Public Policy, 2009. Accessed on January 20, 2022, https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ870099
22. Esther Duflo, Pascaline Dupas, and Michael Kremer. “The Impact of Free Secondary Education: Experimental Evidence from Ghana.” SSRN Electronic Journal, 2021. Accessed on January 22, 2022, https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3874078
23. Ibid.
24. STEMi Makers Africa. “Project Kuongoza” Accessed on February 19, 2022, https://stemiafrica.org/project-kuongoza/