Gender canyon: getting girls into schools in the South is literally a matter of life and death … Can `gender-sensitive' education help … ?

New Internationalist, August, 1999

Of course different places with different problems require different solutions. As with so many aspects of development there is no one model which can be approved on high and then applied everywhere. While most countries have an inbuilt bias against girls' education, there are some that have always tended the other way, like Lesotho or Mongolia, in whose pastoralist traditions boys have always been expected to remain with their herds. But what is clear is that no attempt to guarantee all children an education will succeed if it is not sensitive to the gender dimension.

Let 12-year-old Amina Hassan of Chikunja Village in Tanzania have the last word. She is one of the girls who has been utterly untouched by the world's supposed commitment to sexual equality in education by the end of the millennium. `I wake up very early,' she says. `I have no notion of time. I sweep the compound, wash last night's dishes. Then I go to the well, but the natural wells are all dry now and we have to walk very far to the artificial wells. We have to wait in a long queue as there are many people. Then I go to the farm to dig or pick cashewnuts. I prepare the day's relish and make ugali for the family. I sometimes get a few hours to play with my friends in the afternoon. I pound cassava or maize for the evening and next day's meal; I then cook supper. After meals I play or listen to adult conversations, especially when there's moonlight. I go to bed when adults go to sleep. Maybe I could go to school, but it is expensive, and my mother will be alone to do all the work.'

Gurl

From Adam's rib

It's prophesied

I came,

but that's his story

I'm walking on my own

down these streets

with a stop sign on every corner,

takin' my time.

I've got no place to go 'cept forward.

Down these highways without a road

map,

down these sidewalks,

where the cracks want to

break my mother's back,

where the city is crowded.

I'm walking on my own.

I'm not on a Stairmaster,

and I won't wait for an elevator.

I'm taking the fire escape

to the top floor.

If I want to,

I'll walk all around the world,

taking the long way

or the shortcuts,

'cross countries and through

oceans.

I won't be swimming.

I'll walk

on my own.

Mary Blalock, who was a high-school student in Portland, Oregon, when she wrote this poem.

(1) Lawrence H Summers, Investing in All The People, Quad-i-Azam Lecture, January 1992, World Bank.

(2) Dynamic African Headmistresses, FAWE 1995.

(3) Pauline Rose; Getachew Yoseph; Asmaru Berihun; and Tegegn Nuresu; Gender and Primary Schooling in Ethiopia, IDS 1997.

(4) NI 292, July 1997.

(5) The State of the World's Children 1999, UNICEF.

(6) The Economist, 29 May 1999.