Gender equality in education in Afghanistan refers to equal access, learning processes, outcomes, and benefits regardless of gender. While school enrollment has increased with nearly 7 million children enrolled and 2.5 million girls, gender inequality remains, especially in higher education where only 19% of university students are female. Barriers to equality include cultural norms, limited decision-making power for women, misinterpretations of Islam, security issues, poverty, and geography. Strategies to improve equality involve increasing school access, safety, community involvement, sports, and teacher training.
2. WHAT IT IS!
Gender equality is defined in Oxford
Dictionary as “the state in which access to
rights or opportunities is unaffected by
gender.”
4 dimension of Gender Equality (Subrahmanian
2003)
equality of access, equality in the learning
process, equality in educational outcomes
and equality of external results
3. WHERE WE ARE
GENERAL EDUCATION
Nearly 7 million children are enrolled in
schools , around 37% or 2.5 million of them
are girls
An over eight-fold increase in the number of
teachers to 170,000 (30% female)
Over 79,000 students graduated from grade
12 in 1387 (26% female)
4. WHERE WE ARE
HIGHER EDUCATION
Gender inequality in higher education is higher than
in general education
According to Packer (2010), “by 2001 there were
just 7800 students representing one of the lowest
enrolment rates in the world.”
According to MoHE, about (99,530) students are
studying in the public universities across the
country of which 19% were female
5.
6. Culture and history has the most influential
impact on human society.
limited right over decision making.
Afghan pride
patrilocality
lack of education (85% of women are
illiterate)
7. RELIGION AND STEREOTYPES
Islam gives equal rights to both gender
1 wrong interpretation of Islam
Beliefs which we develop over a period of time.
2 Age (our people don’t like a big girl going to
school, that is also why my father doesn’t let
me, he doesn’t want to be embarrassed by
relatives and friends (Yasmin 14 years old)
{Hunte2005}
3 Mental segregations (some grow up seeing
themselves lower than man
8. ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS
1 security
2 geography
3 economy
poverty is the most integral part of gender
bias in third world countries
9.
10. STRATEGIES FOR GIRLS’ EDUCATION
1- Taking special measures to reach the
most disadvantaged girls.
2- Locating schools closer to children’s
homes
3- Making sure girls and boys are safe.
Breaking the silence about violence at school.
11. STRATEGIES FOR GIRLS’ EDUCATION
4- Involving the local community.
5- Making sure men and boys are involved.
6- Promoting sports in schools.
7- Recruiting and training teachers.
