'Promote gender equality and empower women: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015.'
From the Millennium Development Goal 3 (UN, 2010)
Although a variety of organizations from governmental to non-governmental have tried to enhance the accessibility to a woman's education and job prospects in developing countries, little improvement has been shown since the agreement on the MDGs in 2000. Major international institutes including the UN have given a higher priority to this goal and invested heavily on school construction and scholarship offers, claiming that the augmented levels of female education helps to alter their position in the labor market (Sinding & Steven, 2008). However, skeptics on this view argue that extended investment is not only insufficient for drawing educational gender equality but also increasing chances of learning cannot lead to higher levels of employment and the social status of women without overall progress in wider social perceptions of women, infrastructure and the job market.
This essay will outline the argument with three sections. Firstly, a brief overview of a global labor market and education provision with the state analysis will be introduced. Secondly, the explanation of the status quo of investment on women's education will be presented with research results. Lastly, this paper will address key issues on low female education and occupation and present their solutions in three parts.
A huge gap in the labor market still exists between low and high-income countries. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA, 2012a) highlights the fact that while the latter is enjoying the benefits of the Information Age in which jobs are mostly distributed over the secondary and tertiary sector -manufacturing and service sector, agriculture is a dominant industry of the former, in which peasant farmers eke out a subsistence living by farming a piece of land. The situation of the female labor market in poor countries is even more disturbing; women's life in a rural area is in the informal sector and an urban existence is stuck in the sweatshops such as textile and assembly factories. Few women have decent work in these countries (FAO, 2011).
The reasons for this poor female employment situation can be found in the current educational state. According to research by UNDP (2005 cited in Thirlwall, 2011) in primary schooling in Sub-Saharan Africa, 11 female students are unenrolled per 100 male students, 21 in secondary and 38 in tertiary on average. Furthermore, female enrolment rate drops from 92 to 4 percent in moving from lower to higher education (Table1) (ibid, 2011). As clearly seen from the table, the education of women lags far behind that of men. This is because the considerable time-consuming housework such as collecting woods for fuel, drawing water, cleaning and cooking reduces the availability of learning for school-aged girls. Remote locations of living, where inhabitants need to travel long hours to acquire water and basic necessities, even worsen the situation, depriving them of training time as time spent for each work increases (Memis & Antonopoulos, 2010). Another reason is a conventional social perception of emphasis on maternalism. In Muslim countries, a woman should stay at home, raising her children and supporting her husband, for instance, shorn of her right to learn (Hamdan, 2005).
Table 1. Educational provision and literacy, females relative to males, 2005
Adult literacy
Gross primary enrolment
Gross secondary enrolment
Gross tertiary enrolment
Female rate (% aged 15 and older)
1995-2005
Ratio of female rate to male rate
1995-2005
Female rate (%) 2005
Ratio of female rate to male rate
1995-2005
Female rate (%) 2005
Ratio of female rate to male rate
1995-2005
Female rate (%) 2005
Ratio of female rate to male rate
1995-2005
Developing countries
69.9
0.91
104
0.94
58
0.93
16
0.91
Least developed countries
44.3
0.80
90
0.89
28
0.81
3
0.63
Arab States
59.4
0.88
88
0.90
65
0.92
21
1.01
East Asia and the pacific
86.7
0.99
110
0.98
72
1.00
21
0.93
Latin America and the Caribbean
89.7
1.01
115
0.96
91
1.08
32
1.17
South Asia
47.4
0.81
109
0.93
48
0.83
9
0.74
Sub-Saharan Africa
51.2
0.84
92
0.89
28
0.79
4
0.62
Central & Eastern Europe and the CIS
98.7
1.00
107
0.99
90
0.98
63
1.30
Source: UNDP (2005 cited in Thirlwall, 2011)
It is commonly believed that lack of investment brings about disparity in women's training, which consequently causes their lower social status and impoverishment (UN, 2010). In other words, the gender equality both in education and employment could be achieved through higher levels of female education with extensive investment including building more schools in remote areas, offering more scholarships or tuition waivers to girls. There are several studies conducted by the World Bank which prove that improved levels of female education decreases gender inequality in the labor market. It can be attained through both achievement of higher-income jobs and diminished earning gaps between both genders (Aslam et al, 2008). With this research result, a majority of international aid organizations has advised governments in developing countries to expand and allocate their budgets to female education. In the case of Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world, its government and education bodies made a commitment at several world-size conferences to set up a pro-women education plan which includes substantial expansion of women's facilities at school (Paul-Majumder, 2005).
Nevertheless, it is seriously recognized that this proven research or belief could neither bring a better life to women nor make MDGs attainable, due in 3 years. Then, it is time to turn its attention to other barriers existing on women's issues. As mentioned earlier, the reason for female education refusal in each household can be explained socially and economically: traditional social norms on women (Hamdan, 2005) and unsatisfactory infrastructure (Memis & Antonopoulos, 2010). Furthermore, the cause for low female status in the labor sector can be explicated in that the high rate of unemployment results in the failure of women's employment (ibid, 2010). In this section, this essay will address these obstacles in detail and explain how effectively the problems can be eradicated when alternative solutions are carried out in three parts.
A Change in Social Perception on Women
A typical social norm of the subordination of women to men prevails throughout the world. It comes from all sorts of religions in general and can be found in the Bible, the Koran, the Buddhist scriptures and even in the Confucian teachings (Maguire, 2004). In the example of Confucianism, represented as 'women's subordination to men' and 'the seven valid causes for divorce' [1] , women should care for their family and concentrate only on educating their children. They are not allowed to work outside as men but should stay in the informal sector such as housework and family farm work. In this regard, a great woman has to be a great mother and a wise wife, not a bread winner. The governments in the countries affected by such ideals throughout their whole history such as Korea and Japan have intensely worked on the alteration of the social awareness on women (Kim, 2010).
However, this can be considerably reduced by passing adequate policies and legislations. To be specific, Korea, one of the strongest Confucian countries on Earth, launched the 'Ministry of Gender Equality' in 1995 to balance inequality between genders and change people's perceptions on women widely spread in Korean society. After the introduction of the ministry, there has been an upsurge in the passage of women-related laws and policy making and this has a positive effect on the elimination of gender disparity in Korean society. Furthermore, in each municipal corporation, over 2,400 women-related programs such as a 'paternal education program' to promote the involvement of fathers in nurturing children have been implemented. These programs are monitored through a 'gender impact assessment' to support the promotion of the advanced policies. Compared to 1995, the current status of Korean women has dramatically progressed and they start to participate and become distinguished in all areas of the society. (Paik, 2011)
The Infrastructure Expansion
Another obstacle which circumscribes girl's capabilities and future choices relates to unwaged work. Memis and Antonopoulos (2010) provide the evidence in their book, Unpaid work and the Economy, that spending most of her day time of performing housework such as collecting fire woods, fetching clean water and preparing meals in place of attending a school hinders the education of girls in rural areas. In these areas, what matters the most is the location from/to basic necessities such as water, fuel and public social services mostly available in larger villages or in markets. With the fact that affordable or reliable means of transportation in the country are short, it can be reasonably expected that longer travelling hours ranging from one to three hours are needed to visit the markets, water reserves and forests only for daily work.
Nonetheless, a way to minimize the amount of time used for housework affords the possibility of an economic solution. In Africa, for example, if a girl needs to walk for drawing clean water to the next village for three hours, the governments or aid organizations would better dig a new well for the village for her education or provide her with a dependable conveyance. In fact, the Earth Institute in Columbia University promotes bamboo bike sales in Ghana and in some other African countries to create regional employment as well as deliver inexpensive and recyclable vehicles to the village. The Ghanaian government and the institute also hope for higher school enrolments and attendance from female students by encouraging bicycle use. (KPMG, 2008; Calvo, 1994)
The improvement of the unemployment rate
Most developing countries demonstrate high unemployment rates in common. The unemployment rate in North African countries such as Algeria, Egypt and Tunisia is above 10%. In sub-Saharan Africa, the rates are far worse, ranging from 7% to even over 40% in some countries (CIA, 2012b). In such a depressed situation, the saturation of the job market precipitates the extortion of women's work, landing them in a more troubled condition. In the case of a rural area in Mozambique, a farmer claimed that the women's engagement in wage labor is likely to bring about tension to the village where such paid work is awaited by a flock of male labor forces. Other employers commented on this issue in a more compelling way that they prefer to recruit a more considerable number of female employees to farm work such as tobacco and cotton fields but their husbands stopped their wives from being hired instead of them (Cramer et al., 2008). Meanwhile, urban female workers in the textile and clothing industries are likely to be laid-off during the recession because of the vulnerability of these industries to crisis (Naoko, 2011).
Taking into consideration what ILO reported (ibid, 2011), the pattern of the unemployment differs between sexes in each region of developing economies [2] . When the overall unemployment rate escalates during economic crisis, the unemployment rate of women has a tendency to rise more rapidly than that of men in some countries, whereas the male unemployment rate recuperates more quickly than that of women during times of recovery. It means that the women's labor market is more susceptible to business fluctuations than men's. This frustrating fact notwithstanding, it can be expected that there seems some room for growth in the female employment sector when the economy improves from the depression or develops from the poverty.
Even though recognized international aid organizations have worked in a number of areas to promote female education and labor status, assigning considerable amount of budget to this agenda, there have rarely been visible signs of its advancement. However, other development areas such as a social norm change, expanding infrastructure, and the recovery of overall employment should receive attention in terms of educating women. Among the cases addressed above, however, adopting new infrastructure can be limited because of some restrictions on women in certain societies. Calvo (1994) exemplifies this point in his case study that if one tries to introduce the bike system in Uganda, they will have difficulties in convincing women to drive bicycles because people have hardly seen women driving any vehicles in this country.
Recently, UN starts to set up a new goal called 'Sustainable Development Goals (UN, 2012)' which expands its targets into the environment. Taking account of the fact that gender disparity is yet widespread all over the world, they need to deal with issues in innovative perspectives for their new goals. All factors -physical investment, social change, infrastructure, and employment development- should work harmoniously in one time and draw a virtuous cycle (Revenga & Shetty, 2012).
