Women and Education in Bangladesh
In Adhunika blog, we have been discussing various issues among ourselves, “we†being the people who have access to Internet, technology and education. But we realize that many women in Bangladesh don’t have access to Internet; many don’t even have access to proper education.
Recently I was doing research in order to apply for funding to start a project in Bangladesh. The project is near and dear to my heart and is based on the concept of Empowering Women through Education. It aims to offer advisory and monitory support for girls in the remote areas of Bangladesh to help them get to the next level of education or training. I like to share some findings of the research with our bloggers.
According to the UN 2003 data for Bangladesh, the ratio of male and female literacy rate in Bangladesh is 100:62 (age group: 15 years and above). School enrollment rates at the primary and secondary levels are almost equal with girls doing slightly better. How exciting! However, this rate dramatically drops for girl students at the high-school (11 and 12 grades) and university levels as indicated in the table below.
| School enrollment |
Male and female ratio (in %) |
| Primary school enrolment | 100:104 |
| Secondary (middle-school level) enrolment | 100:111 |
| Tertiary enrolment (High School i.e. 11 and 12 grades and college/university level) | 100:50 |
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Why girls are falling behind at the higher levels of education? There are many reasons but I found two major ones especially in the context of remote areas in Bangladesh. First reason is socio-economic.  Parents with limited income can’t always bear the cost of their children’s education. Spending money on daughter’s education is not considered to be a good investment. The general notion is, if the son gets educated, he would support the parents when they get older. But the daughter would get married and leave the family. The second reason is tied with the first reason, finding a husband for the daughter would relief the parents from further responsibilities, and also gives them the assurance of her good future. In most of the cases girls cannot afford to go for higher education on their own even if they want to without the monitory support from their families.
Marriage does not always bring happiness in a poverty-stricken family. If the woman does not have any educational or formal training, she can’t help the family with her income. This makes her dependent on her husband and a burden in the limited-income family. She also looses her self-esteem.
We need to realize that the value of education for women in a society. Besides generating income to support the family, educated women also become good mothers who raise their children as educated members of the society. This project, Empowering Women through Education is trying to collect funds to help these women. With a minimal monitory support, these girls can get to the next level of their lives. Here are some interesting numbers!
- Only $100 can support one high school student in a remote area for 8 months!
- Only $150 would help a women start up a small business in a rural area
- Only $200 would buy her a sewing machine that can solve the monitory need of the family forever!
- About $1200 can make one university graduate from a 4 yr program!
Many of us know these facts already. I thought discussing this would remind us of our responsibilities to promote women’s education!
September 15th, 2006 at 9:24 pm
Your statistics does not state what is the % of kids that join the school system. Also if it is possible to make unsecured loans to the students at low subsidised rates, when you can help many more with the same pool of money. However this money should be only availed by 1st generation kids in college.
Only upto higher secondary education should be universal and compulsory - general education beyond that is a luxury, unless they are meritorious, which you don’t mention in your survey, nor clearify.
Education beyond Secondary could then go to skill training rather than general education in humanities(BA).
September 17th, 2006 at 4:58 am
Most of it are sad truth. Beside the socio-economic reason (that mainly
touch base on economic reason and general practices) there are few other,
albeit tied with socio-economic.
Security: girls in general are grown weak and lack of confidence in most of the rural areas. Even if a girl was born in a rural rich family, not neesserarily that girl will continue to study to be self dependent. The parents look for her husband regardless-
a. they fear the girl may involve in an affair
b. the girl may fall into the eyes of local gunda
c. the girl may get a proposal from men who seem to be second to none.
More importantly rural parents are not educated and regardless the economic situation, by default they may do the same mistake, again and again.
The other reason is dowry. Many parents in rural areas get anxious when they have daughter, it is worst when they have more than one daughter. It becomes the mission of their life then to get rid of their daughters as early as possible. The girl themselves also not always help to overcome the limitations. The socio education around them often make them believe that husband is their destiny (both cultural and religious influence), they remain weak and in rural areas a beautiful girl can hardly go outside as she gets manipulated that mostly unsaid. So she feels getting married earlier is the only work around.
There are hopes. Thru education, ngo activities lot of damage control ongoing to the bigger group who were victims of the whole environment. As for prevention, the victim are getting the education thru life and thru help and convey the msg to the newer generations, someday it will all get better. Yet it is a long way to go.
September 18th, 2006 at 11:03 pm
I am curious to know why use the word ‘Empowering’? Also note that the ‘Heridity Laws’ in Bangladesh - endorses inequality.
There is also a big flaw in the ‘education system’. Thailand n some other countries have adopted the ‘Concentrated Language Encounter’ ‘CLE’ system of education - which has proven to be very successful.
Unfortunately, the status of women are not much different, in our so called ‘urban literate families’. Both: systems and attitudes have to change, Laws need to be modified.
September 19th, 2006 at 8:15 am
I am glad to find out that someone is taking up such an encouraging research as urs. But to tell u the truth there are lots of researches and studies currently running on the issue of women’s education and empowerment. But how many bring positive results for those who need it?
I would like to clear here that education upto higher secondary is free for females. So when we say that females r leaving school for economic reasons, its not because they can’t afford it, but its cause they need to start earning or be involved in household work.
Unfortunately females r not expected to take up higher positions in organizations, thus higher education is considered useless for them.
I work for BRAC’s Gender Justice and Diversity Unit,and we have a program where we sensitize village memebers about gender relations. Part of it is to make them realize the importance of female education. I’m proud to say that we have achieved huge success in this program and are palnning to expand it to the rest of the country. With new projects coming up, I think we can be hopefull to be able to improve the condition of female education in Bangladesh.
September 19th, 2006 at 11:35 am
I agree with Nazia that It is more of a “socio-economic” than economic reason being the major obstacle since female education is free up to 12th grade. Therefore, a major component of this type of projects should be raising awareness about the value of education to make the project sustainable. I am really glad to see that BRAC is successfully running such a project.
On Sandip’s comment regarding the data clarification, I do have a detailed data but didn’t use it in this blog in order to keep it simple for our bloggers. I agree with your micro-credit concept, in order to use the same pool of money to help many. We have that plan to implement in the future. For now, we have limited the scope of the project to “education” due to financial constraints. As the project grows, it can be expanded to skill training as well.
Seahawk, I can’t agree with you more. Your points are bringing up the social issues that Nazia has also pointed out, it is not always money, it is the society and awareness.
I am really glad to have such insightful comments. These will help me to revisit the project details and address as the project grows.
September 21st, 2006 at 9:45 am
Oneza,
Thanks for bringing the topic for our readers. Over the years I have become hopeful knowing there are people like you who wants to make a change in the society.
After all the glaring statistics and research, I believe it all comes down to ‘what we as an individual can do about it’. It is great to learn about program such as BRAC’s Gender Justice and Diversity Unit, may be Nazia can elaborate on how their work has become more succesful than others…
no one has to re-invent the wheel, all we need is to know how… lets learn from what’s working and apply that knowledge for the best.
Oneza, good luck with your research, keep us updated through the process.