Girls and women in the educational system: The curricular challenge
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Girls and women in the educational system: The curricular challenge Nelly P. Stromquist1
© UNESCO IBE 2020
Abstract This Viewpoint argues that, while efforts must continue to achieve universal primary and secondary education at the global level for both boys and girls, the concern with access and thus enrollment and completion parity has blinded many governments from seeing the crucial need to examine what is actually learned in school. Stronger concern with curriculum would bring a stronger focus on the formal knowledge conveyed in schools and on the ways in which this knowledge might (or might not) facilitate a substantial change in the social relations of gender. Keywords Curriculum · Gender · Inequality · SDG4 · Future of education · Covid-19 Global and national policies continue to emphasize equal access to primary and secondary school for boys and girls. While the problem remains, access at the primary-school level has greatly improved and is seriously limited in only one region of the world: sub-Saharan Africa. Access at the secondary-school level has also improved, but much remains to be done in rural areas and low-income urban areas. Cycle completion is still work in progress. Across the world, 9 of 10 girls (89%) complete their primary education, and 3 of 4 girls (70%) complete lower secondary education (World Bank 2018). Boys have completion levels similar to those of girls in primary education, and slightly higher in lower secondary education. Upper secondary school completion is a persistent challenge for low-income countries, as, according to UIS statistics (UNESCO 2017, p. 352), sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia register a gender gap of 22% and 10%, respectively. The issue of cycle completion is important, for it affects students’ transition from primary to secondary schooling and from secondary schooling to college. While efforts must continue to achieve universal primary and secondary education at the global level for both boys and girls, the concern with access and thus enrollment * Nelly P. Stromquist [email protected] 1
College of Education, University of Maryland, College Park, USA
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and completion parity has blinded many governments from seeing the crucial need to examine what is actually learned in school and how this knowledge might (or might not) facilitate a substantial change in the social relations of gender. An exclusive emphasis on access to schooling implicitly assumes that the knowledge and practices that schools promote are always beneficial, useful, and beyond questioning. In other words, it detracts from coming to terms with problematic aspects of the knowledge currently transmitted and from identifying both the knowledge needed to challenge the gender status quo and the corresponding measures needed to promote gender transformative knowledge. To begin with, concern with curriculum would bring a welcome shift from focusing only on sex (boys and girls) to a stronger preoccupation with the formal knowledge conveyed in schools. This
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