About the authors:
Nicole Fernandes is a second-year undergraduate student at the University of Melbourne, pursuing a double major in Economics and Politics. She has a fervent passion for economics, particularly around income inequality and wants to increase accessibility to economics education for everyone around her. She recently wrapped up an internship at the Melbourne Social Equity Institute where she wrote a public policy report on the Attainment & Retainment of CaLD Workers in the Agricultural Sector in Victoria, Australia.
Vasundhara Marwah is currently a student in the 12th grade at Sanskriti School in New Delhi. Drawn to the fields of economics, international relations and public policy, she enjoys exploring the connections between data, people and global issues. She hopes to pursue these fields at the undergraduate level in the future.
Introduction
The key to developing human potential, education is fundamental for promoting societies and a nation’s development. Thus, in order to advance on the global stage in terms of economic growth, social justice, equality, scientific advancement, national integration, and cultural preservation, India must continue providing universal access to quality education to its large population of youth. Over the next decade, India will have the highest population of young people in the world, and its ability to provide high-quality educational opportunities to this generation will determine the future of the country. (Ministry of Human Resource Development, n.d.)
Although universal education is the best way forward for ensuring the development and maximization of the rich talents of this country’s youth, India still fails to achieve this in many ways. While reforms have been made to provide free education to all children, the potential of education to empower women has been overlooked. Female education is a tool capable of empowering women to overcome societal barriers, thereby making women’s lives safer and more secure. When fully capitalized through effective institutions and sufficient funding, education can stem existing gender inequalities in India. It can mitigate the harm caused by poverty and eradicate child labour, child marriage and abuse towards females (Rodrigues and Mehta 2018).
Educating girls is also closely linked with the UN Sustainable Development Goals of gender equality and women empowerment. Even when girls do attend schools, the question lies in whether or not they are learning the required foundational knowledge and developing the necessary skills to ensure that they meaningfully participate and progress in the society, both socially as well as economically. Although progress has been made on the foundational literacy and numeracy front, significant gaps in life skills and vocational training continue to deprive girls of a level playing field. Thus, an increased focus on holistic development is the need of the hour (Sharma 2021).
Thus, this policy report aims to investigate the causes behind the illiteracy of the female population in India with the objective of finding a comprehensive, practical, and long-lasting solution to this issue. To achieve equality for females through school education, we intend for our policy recommendations to be holistic, affordable, and accessible to all girls throughout India. In the following sections, we will discuss previous measures taken by the Indian government to encourage female education in greater detail, discuss modifications of current policies, and set out recommendations for achieving women equality through it.
Previous Policies
Established in 2009, the Right to Education Act in India was a major turning point for school education, making education a fundamental right for children in the age group 6 to 14. The Act brought positive changes in the school education system which also benefited girls. Through Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, the umbrella scheme for implementation of RTE Act, critical barriers like access and inclusion were addressed to a large extent, this led to increase in enrolment at both the primary and upper primary level (Menon, n.d.).
While the RTE act has been successful in ensuring higher enrolments for girls, especially at the elementary levels with a gross enrolment ratio of ~99%, retaining girls and ensuring that they complete school continues to remain a challenge. The problem is especially acute when we consider the 15-18 age group where 40% of girls are out-of-school. Access to education, although important, is not the sole metric when solving for the challenges faced by girls. Thus, attention needs to be drawn to reduce the drop-out rates and ensure that the girl reaches and completes the 12th grade (Sharma 2021).
Along with the RTE act, schemes like Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan and National Scheme of Incentives to Girls for Secondary Education emphasized secondary education of girls through scholarships, subsidies and incentives. With the introduction of Beti Bachao Beti Padhao in 2014 a renewed emphasis was given to education of girls (Menon, n.d.).
The Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme was a long overdue intervention to ensure the basic survival of girls in a highly discriminatory environment. However, despite being well-intentioned, it became a toothless scheme wherein its central objective of improving the child sex ratio (CSR) in some of the country’s worst performing districts remains unmet owing to ineffective implementation. Further, evidence suggests that State and District level task forces have not even managed to convene regularly, let alone actually monitor the quantitative output targets set out in the scheme. Most critically, expenditure of funds earmarked for the scheme has been centered around national level media campaigns, as opposed to community level interventions for improving education and health outcomes. In order to ensure that the BBBP’s implementation is reoriented towards the right direction, the national, state and district level task forces must assume the overall responsibility for scheme’s implementation at each level, and be held accountable for successes and failures (Nikore 2019).
Policy Recommendations
In order to effect any substantive change, we must look at advancing gender equality both in and through education. The former may be indicated by gender parity in enrolment, school completion, representation of gender diversity, and equal opportunity for children of all genders to be empowered by education (Outlook, 2023).
- Introduce a new compulsory subject: Gender Education, aimed at developing a social and political understanding of gender as part of the official school curriculum for both boys and girls, at the post-primary level in all state and education boards. Explicit conversations and critical dialogues on gender bias and power should officially become part of the student experience. Defining Gender Education as a standalone curricular subject will give it legitimacy and create a stronger impetus for incorporating gender in the classroom. This will also necessitate the development of the requisite curricular and teacher materials, which the National Council of Educational and Research and Training should create in collaboration with NGOs like the Prerna school (Urvashi, 2018).
- Incorporate gender education compulsorily, in pre- and in-service teacher trainings and teacher education programs. Teachers are potentially powerful agents of social change, provided they can perceive themselves as such. Training in effective communication of gender-related issues with the community should also be included in pre-service training. All of the above implies intensive in-service training of teachers and educators, along with the development of teacher training materials and curriculum, which should be created by the State Education department in collaboration with NGOs (Urvashi, 2018).
- Increase access to facilities for menstrual hygiene and nutrition in schools. Children need nourishment to develop and learn, and the most vulnerable girls who experience marginalization and poverty frequently lack enough food. Free school lunches assist in breaking the cycle of malnutrition and in keeping students in school, especially girls. To maintain a respectful, gender-equitable learning environment, and support girls’ retention in adolescence, water and sanitation facilities, particularly menstrual hygiene management facilities and sensitisation, need to be offered to girls in school (FAO 2019).
- Enhance education systems to deliver gender-responsive STEM education, including through teacher preparation, and educational content, to girls as part of education curricula. These skills should include critical thinking, effective communication, collaboration, and engaging with information and communications technologies. Ensure that vulnerable girls in secondary school have access to high-quality, fully funded education that focuses on numeracy, reading, developing skills for respectable work, and life skills (UNICEF and ILO, 2018).
- Improve and build proper menstrual hygiene facilities for girls in schools. A 2015 report by Dasra, a Mumbai-based NGO & the Bank of America states that “Girls tend to miss school six days a month on an average due to the inability to manage their periods at school”. This eventually contributes to almost 23% of girls dropping out of school on reaching puberty, which critically undermines their potential as individuals and future workers. For India to achieve a gender equal learning environment, girls are required to have menstrual hygiene facilities in school so that they are not forced to stay back home and miss out on their learning. With access to these facilities, it can ensure not only reduction in girls’ absence from school but also better health.
- Mobility can also create an issue for aspiring students. In most rural areas in India, getting to the school is difficult due to the distances as well as natural barriers. The ability of women to move freely, unimpeded by harassment or other interruptions, is crucial to increasing women’s education access rates. Bus services should be provided by public schools, which would help girl children to easily and safely commute. With such an efficient and easy mode to commute, families would not be hesitant to send their girls to school, even if they live far away. This would also build confidence in the education system. The National Education Policy 2019, stated how the attendance rates of girls drastically increased in Bihar following the distribution of cycles scheme (International Alliance of Women, 2020).
Conclusion
This report has analyzed the importance of female education in achieving female equality in India. It explored the various societal and cultural stigmas behind female education and the steps taken behind the Indian government to promote female education in both urban and rural areas across the country. Through the RTE Act and Beti Bachao Beti Padhao schemes, the government managed to reduce the barriers behind female education and increase enrollment of girl students in primary schools across the country. Still, these policies did not successfully manage to retain the same numbers in high schools as many young girls were compelled to drop out due to lack of amenities and accessibility to the schools. Further, the government mismanaged the implementation of these schemes and failed to appropriately finance it.
Hence, we recommend that the government should take steps to correct these errors in their policies by incorporating the suggestions mentioned above. Through subjects like Gender Education, the government will ensure that the new generation is taught about equality from a young age. Improving the menstrual facilities across schools will help ease the strain on teenage girls, reducing the number of females that dropout of high school. Lastly, the government should make schools more accessible to students residing in rural areas, incentivizing more girls to attend school. Undoubtedly, these recommendations require large investments by the government, who also have to ensure that these solutions are properly managed and implemented. Through these recommendations, the government will not only improve the quality of female education in India but also female equality, ensuring India’s development across various sectors on the global platform.
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