Education

AS the push for greater representation in the National Assembly takes off, women are now looking to the broader social and economic issues that continue to hedge females out of positions of power.

"Economic issues, the issue of gender inequality in education and healthcare, these are all issues that contribute to the problem that women cannot join politics," Thida Khus, executive director on the NGO Silika's Committee to Promote Women in Politics (CPWP) told the Post.

AS the push for greater representation in the National Assembly takes off, women are now looking to the broader social and economic issues that continue to hedge females out of positions of power.

"Economic issues, the issue of gender inequality in education and healthcare, these are all issues that contribute to the problem that women cannot join politics," Thida Khus, executive director on the NGO Silika's Committee to Promote Women in Politics (CPWP) told the Post.

Punjab Assembly Member Fouzia Behram on Wednesday emphasised that rural women must get education to change their destiny.

Speaking at the first national conference on World Rural Women Day organised by civil society organisations here, she said without education rural women would be further pushed into poverty, exclusion and suffering by the patriarchal society.

Hundred of rural women converged on Islamabad in a historic gathering to share their experiences and highlight their issues in a bid to create awareness among the masses that despite their handsome contribution to the country's economic and social development, they were denied their basic rights and excluded from the decision-making processes.

On a daily basis in schools across the nation, South African girls of every race and economic class encounter sexual violence and harassment at school that impedes their realization of the right to education. This report examines the barrier to equal educational opportunity posed by the South African government's failure to adequately address the gender violence prevalent in the South African school system. South Africa was selected for this study not only because of the scope of the problem but also because of the opportunities for change there, where educators both in and outside of government have shown increasing interest in finding solutions.

The aim of this study was to assess secondary school teachers' comfort in teaching adolescents about sexuality and HIV/AIDS, behavioral control and outcome beliefs about HIV/AIDS education and teacher knowledge about HIV/AIDS. The sample consisted of 54 male (35.6%) and 96 female (64.4%) secondary school teachers who were mostly life stkills teachers, from 150 schools across South Africa. Findings suggest that most secondary school teachers, are knowledgeable about AIDS, feel moderately comfortable teaching students about AIDS-related topics, have the knowledge and ability to teach about HIV/AIDS, but lack some material and community support. Teacher in-service training was found to have a significant impact on perceived behavioral control of HIV/AIDS education and HIV/AIDS knowledge.

Teenage pregnancy has militated against the educational success of girls in South Africa. Statistics show that four out of ten girls become pregnant overall at least once before age 20. Education is important for these girls in order to break the poverty cycle in which most of them are trapped. Though the girls are allowed to return to school after becoming mothers, they face many challenges in trying to balance motherhood and the demands of schooling. The aim of this study was to find out how teen mothers cope with schooling, hence how much support is rendered to them. A qualitative research approach was used to understand the social phenomena of teenage mothers as learners. The result of the research showed that teen mothers in Cape Town receive insufficient support (physically and emotionally) and the consequence in that many quit or do not succeed with schooling.

Regarding gender equity, higher education in South Africa is somewhat anomalous by international comparisons. Absolute gender parity in overall enrollments was reached by 1997. By 1999, women students were in the majority. At universities, women were already the majority in 1995. While still in the minority at technikons, there has been a very rapid increase in female enrollment, more than doubling from 42,000 to 86,000 from 1993-99. This signals a strong entry into vocational fields by women. However, these overall figures hide the fact that women remain underrepresented in certain fields, such a science and technology, and at the higher qualification levels, particularly at the master's and doctoral levels. Within some fields, such as business and commerce, women tend to be concentrated in "lower" programs such as public administration, rather than the "higher" ones such as business management. Conversely, women students tend to be concentrated in the traditional fields associated with females, such as teaching, social work, and the "lower" health and law programs, as well as at the lower certificate and diploma qualifications levels in all fields.

The Global Action Plan is a global strategy developed to improve international and country-level coordination for Education for All. It aims to clarify the roles of the five international agencies spearheading the global EFA movement (UNDP, UNESCO, UNICEF, UNFPA and the World Bank) and to define their coordinated, joint action at the global level.