| |
|
Date Added to
Site: 1st March 2006 |
| |
Short Summary
|
| Title |
Educating Girls in Bangladesh: Watering a Neighbour's
Tree? |
| Author |
Raynor, J. |
| Publication
Date |
September 2005 |
| Publisher |
Oxfam Great Britain (GB) |
| Donor |
UK Department for International Development (DFID)
|
|
Short Summary |
An old Bengali saying observes: 'caring for a
daughter is like watering a neighbour's tree'. It reflects a view
that it is a waste of resources to invest in a daughter who will be
'lost' to another family through marriage. This argument has previously
been used to justify girls' exclusion from school in Bangladesh. However,
recent government and NGO lead education initiatives placed stronger
emphasis on girls' education, leading to an increase in girls' access
to education over the last ten years. Such widely praised projects
included a secondary Female Stipend Programme (FSP), which began on
a small scale in 1982 and became a nationwide programme in 1994. This
article examines the expansion of girls' education in Bangladesh -
and how it is perceived - with the government's secondary FSP used
as a case study. It argues that it is now time for such projects to
introduce an agenda for the empowerment of women and girls. It further
considers the need to improve the quality of girls' education in overcrowded
schools, and argues for efforts to increase the supply of women teachers
to be accompanied by the provision of gender training. The article
asks why, if the main purpose of education is perceived to be enabling
girls to take up paid employment, has there been no research into
employment opportunities for girls once they leave school. It ends
by calling for education programmes to link existing and future initiatives
with employment opportunities and income generation projects. It notes
this should be preceded by a thorough appraisal of such opportunities,
recognising that Bangladesh's economy is essentially agrarian, with
limited scope for formal employment- for men or women. |
| Summary Source |
adapted from author's summary |
| Complete Document |
 View
PDF (Portable Document Format) |
|
