Two thirds of children not in school are girls. Drop-out rates for girls are higher than for boys, and girls are less likely to go on to higher education. The next generation of illiterate adults, like the last, will be predominantly female. The systematic failure, in India, to educate women and girls on equal terms with boys and men is a human rights violation on a massive scale.
Gender differences are striking in states like Jammu with enrolment rate of 80 percent for male and 35 percent for female. Rajasthan is another state where enrolment in the secondary level for male is 74 percent and female is 34 percent.
Education allows women to make independent decisions about their own futures, and prepares them for meaningful work and economic independence. However, due to social, economical and cultural reasons, many girls are denied of education.
Girls are required to spend a far greater proportion of their time on household tasks than boys, reducing the time available to them for education. In India girls aged under 13 work on average 5.5 hours a day compared with 1.8 hours for boys. In India, Bangladesh and Nepal, girls assume responsibility for collecting firewood, water and caring for siblings by the age of five. Inconvenient timetables which are not designed around other tasks children are expected to perform and curricula irrelevant to girls’ socio-economic context contribute to their lower attendance rates. Even where girls’ enrolment and attendance is relatively high, the time and space available to them for homework and extra-curricular education activities tends to be limited in comparison with that available to boys, particularly in poorer households and rural areas.
Other cultural factors impeding girls’ education include early marriage, early pregnancy, and the perception that investment in a daughter’s education will be lost to her future husband’s family; traditions and customs arising from ethnic and religious background; fear of sexual or other violence towards girls outside the home.
As a result, most families deny their daughters of education.
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