Role Of Gender Inequality In Education Essay

EDUCATING GIRLS’: A PATHWAY TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Investing in human capital has been regarded as one of the most effective ways of decreasing poverty and encouraging sustainable development. This is so because education is broadly recognized as the access to economic security and opportunity. Nevertheless, girls and women in developing countries usually receive less education than their male counterparts. Over the years, development agencies have realized reducing gender inequality in education as a vital mechanism of promoting development and that failure to educate girls’ limits economic growth in the developing world by wasting human capital.

This recognition also prompted the United Nations (UN) to set itself the target of eliminating gender disparity in education at all levels by 2015 in its Millennium Development Goals. Although progress has been recorded in recent years, girls all through their lives have continually suffered severe disadvantage and marginalization in education systems particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. An estimated 31 million girls of primary school age and 32 million girls of lower secondary school age were out of school in 2013 . Also, about 100 million children worldwide – 57 per cent

To achieve this, parents, caretakers and the public need to be sensitized on the benefits of education particularly for girls and women. Also, advocacy on equal rights, treatment and social fairness in issues pertaining to education should be promoted. Similarly, government can encourage poor parents who cannot cope with education expenses by providing scholarships/bursaries to worthy indigent female citizens. Social workers/Teachers should also be authorized to report or feasibly sanction parents who refuse to enroll their daughters in schools, this means governments should ensure such authorizations are being