WOMEN AND EDUCATION

The enrolment of girls in colleges and universities countrywide is low at 41 per cent and abysmally lower in professional courses at 18 per cent, according to official data. This may be partly because girls prefer arts to science and technical courses, and partly because they do not get as much financial support and encouragement from parents as boys do due to social prejudices.

They do not have equal access to engineering and management institutions, especially if these are located away from their home towns. Though some states have made education up to the college level free for girls, it is still inaccessible for various reasons, including social and financial. Since a daughter’s marriage is an expensive affair, parents with modest means tend to accord lower priority to her education.

The HRD Ministry’s figures on girls’ enrolment should not be surprising, given the inadequate government spending on education and a less-than-desirable literacy rate in general and of women in particular. Given the high incidence of crime against women, it is not considered safe in small-town and rural India to allow young women to venture out to pursue higher studies, especially when employment prospects are uncertain and the importance of education itself is not understood.
The trend, however, is changing. Defying odds, more and more girls are coming forward to pursue higher education. The female literacy rate has received a quantum jump between 2001 and 2011. According to the provisional 2011 census figures, the male-female literacy gap is at or below 10 per cent in Kerala and Chandigarh and above 20 per cent in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. The regional imbalance has to be corrected if gender equality in education is to be achieved. Education not only lifts women’s economic and social status, it also increases their access to healthcare, reduces maternal mortality rates and leads to an overall development of the family, society and the country as Mao Zedong famously proclaimed, “women hold up half the sky”.