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almeerakhan100

Why is there a Gender Gap in Education?



Girls' education has always been a serious problem all over the world. Despite centuries of protests, three waves of feminism, and the struggle of thousands of women for gender equality still, women experience educational discrimination and various sorts of sufferings due to their gender in different regions of the world. According to the United Nation report, “it is estimated that 15 million girls – mainly those living in poverty – will never set foot in a classroom, compared to 10 million boys.” Currently, Afghani girls are facing educational discrimination where the Taliban government has forbidden girls from continuing their education above the sixth grade on religious grounds. While there is no religious justification for gender-based schooling discrimination.


There are various reasons for the gender gap in education. Some of the barriers to girls getting education are discussed below:


Gender Stereotypes: Girls are understood as responsible for handling domestic chores, raising the children, and taking care of the family. While boys are considered to be the breadwinners of the family. Thus, these gender stereotypes consider the boys as family breadwinners, and girls' financial dependence on men prioritizes boys' education.


Gender-based Violence: Girls often become victims of gender-based violence when traveling to, from, and within schools. Gender-based violence takes many forms, such as kidnapping, sexual harassment, physical assault, etc., and is sometimes even committed by male instructors, community members, and students. As a result, it causes the parents and girls to become deeply concerned, and they stop attending school.


Unfair Legislation: Although article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has the right to education, there are still laws and regulations in certain places that restrict equitable girls' right to education, which causes the girls to drop out of schools. Some policies include prohibiting the admission of pregnant girls and reinforcing discriminatory admission criteria.


Costs and budgets: Girls often have to leave school when their families struggle to make ends meet, cannot afford to bear their children's educational expenses, or pay for transportation. Since parents prioritize their son's education due to the stereotypical belief that boys are the family's breadwinners, it is more common for girls to drop out of school. The government also doesn't allocate enough funds or scholarships to support the girls' education, so girls stop attending school.


Situations of Conflicts and Instabilities: When conflicts, wars, and crises break out, women are the ones who suffer the most from injustice, poverty, and brutality. Education also becomes a significant concern when there is turmoil. When schools are attacked, plundered, damaged, closed due to insecurity, or used for military training, girls' education is affected. When there are conflicts, girls also leave school since gender-based violence becomes very prevalent.


The aforementioned are some of the significant barriers to gender equality in education. Gender disparity could result in conflicts if it’s not looked at time. So, these problems should be overcome by excluding the laws which promote gender discrimination, adequate funding and budgets should be allocated for girls' education, serious action should be taken to end gender-based violence, girls and schools should be protected from threats against girls' education, etc.

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In addition, I believe that child marriage is another factor that prevents females from pursuing an education. An annual average of 15 million females under the age of 18 get married, or 40,000 weddings each day, according to a UN research. Since females in traditional communities are expected to care for their husbands and in-laws rather than seek education, marriage often causes interruptions in and endings to girls' education. Over 60% of child brides in poor nations lack a formal education, which is evidence of this.

Additionally, child marriage causes girls to get pregnant more often and earlier, which raises the dropout rate for females. Nearly 16 million girls between the ages of 15 and 19 give birth every year,…

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almeerakhan100
Jul 06, 2022
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Yes Ali, this is an important factor which contributes to preventing girls education and creates a gender gap. For a long time, child marriage has been a barrier to girls' education. Early marriage ends a girl's education because societal pressure prevents her from attending school once she is married. Furthermore, her life abruptly transforms from playing and studying to married life commitments. According to research, there is a direct link between early marriages and low levels of schooling of girls. According to UNICEF, 21% of Pakistani females marry before the age of 18, and 3% marry before the age of 15. Between 2012 and 2013, 53.7 percent of married females aged 15 to 19 had never attended school. Thus, these…

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You've talked about the gender gap in education in an exquisite way. What do I think, girls' gender is one of the fundamental causes of their marginalization and absence from school. Because low-income families often prioritize boys' education when making educational investments, the poorest females also have the lowest likelihood of finishing elementary school. Ironically, data shows that females from the same background are more likely to drop out of school than boys.

Social, religious, and cultural norms support gender inequality and prevent girls from having an equal opportunity to pursue an education. For instance, women and girls have a disproportionate part of the responsibility for caring for family members and doing home duties. Girls sometimes forsake the possibility of…

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almeerakhan100
Jul 06, 2022
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Thank you Ali for engaging with the post. You are absolutely right that social or cultural norms support gender inequality as its also already addressed in the post and you have also discussed but the important thing is we need interventions to change this trend. Intervention should be introduced to turn things around. Repressive and discriminatory beliefs that shape how boys and men interact with women and set them as marginalized communities must be altered. Similarly, programs that engage with oppressed or marginalized populations such as girls and women must attempt to alter their internalized oppression and enable them to challenge injustice and uneven gender relations. Interventions at the social and relational levels must strive to provide places and opportunities…


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250900690
Jul 01, 2022

When highlighting the issue of the gender gap in conflict ridden areas, many encouragements need to be made in understanding the importance of females receiving education, in countries like Afghanistan where so much as secondary education is not admissible to girls there need to be reforms given the idea that the Taliban’s allow women to work in positions like doctors, teachers and nurses these positions will eventually run dry given that there won’t be any educated female personnel, to encourage female education there can be remedies to issues that may be faced a particular one that is parents having fears, securities to reduce these fears should be invested in from hiring females, and all girls schools

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almeerakhan100
Jul 02, 2022
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Yes yes, this is a issue which need to be solved as soon as possible and i completely agree with you that female teachers, doctors positions will no longer be working. I think its a problem which can be solved by global pressure on Taliban. US forces and other countries with whom Taliban trade should cancel their fixed engagement with the Taliban and force them to reverse their decisions.

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250900690
Jul 01, 2022

The gender gap in education is such a prominent coming of age issue, and though much light has been shed on it, concrete reforms need to exist often; young girls are prejudiced and are kept at home for various reasons, a prominent factor that I believe is also the existence of domestic labor an issue that is explicitly unhighlighted in Pakistan very often girls are working as domestic help, and this is due to the many expenses that parents have and so educational expenses that are believed to have to be bore are ignored, a strategic implementation that I believe was great was the Waseela e Taleem program, this program aims to promote the education of children who face financial…

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almeerakhan100
Jul 02, 2022
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Thank you for engaging with the post and addressing the domestic labor problem. I absolutely agree with your point as my mother was severely ill, and there was no other woman to take proper care of my mother and house; my sister had to quit her studies to take care of the home and my mother. However, I believe there are more complex examples out there, and parents should be educated that they should never, under any circumstances, compromise on their daughters' education. Parents make all of these decisions, so educating them is most important, that their girls are not only meant for domestic chores. For them, there is a lot more.

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The Gender Gap in education is a problem which is witnessed all over the world. Thank you for highlighting many reasons behind why this gap widens each year.


When it come to females and how they are impacted during conflict periods. We could elaborate more by referring to specific conflict zones and examples of what difficulties girls face as compared to boys in reference to educational opportunities. Along with perhaps examples on what roles girls play and the challenges they face during conflict times which prevents them from attaining education.


But the increasing gender gap in education is a issue which needs to be acknowledged and spread awareness about.

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almeerakhan100
Jul 02, 2022
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Thank you Zoya for engaging with the post. Yes, this is a global issue that needs to be addressed and resolved on a practical level. The Global Partnership for Education reports that females are 2.5 times more likely than boys to miss school during war or conflicts. Therefore, it must be addressed. As far as your comment relates to the reasons why females leave schools during conflicts, I believe the primary causes are sexual assaults that girls experience, inequalities (between girls and boys) get more apparent, which subsequently tend to favor boys' education over girls (can be seen in the case of Afghan girls). 

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