Women, Literacy and Development: Overview
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WOMEN, LITERACY AND DEVELOPMENT: OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
The belief that women’s literacy is the key to development has informed government and international aid agency policy and programmes around the world. In the poorest countries, the gap between male and female literacy rates has led policy makers to focus on increasing women’s as opposed to men’s access to literacy, through programmes designed particularly around women’s reproductive role. Researchers have been concerned to find statistical evidence that there are the positive connections between female literacy rates and health indicators such as decreased child mortality and fertility rates. The assumption that illiterate women cannot participate fully in development programmes has led to literacy classes being set up as the entry point to health, nutrition, income generation, community forestry and family planning interventions. This objective has often influenced the curriculum: many women’s literacy programmes adopt a functional literacy approach, linking literacy learning with vocational skills training, health education and ‘awareness raising’ about social issues such as alcoholism. Partly because of the importance of these non-literacy programme elements, there is a tendency to use the term ‘literacy’ synonymously with ‘adult women’s basic education’. For instance, evaluation reports on the benefits of women’s literacy frequently emphasise the social aspects of confidence building, group solidarity, improved health practices and community action, as compared with reading and writing outcomes. E A R LY D E V E L O P M E N T S
The WID (Women In Development) approach of the early 1970s promoted the idea that women needed literacy skills to catch up with men and become equal partners in development. The research agenda was influenced by the ‘efficiency’ policy approach (Moser, 1993) to women’s development at that time, which stressed the economic benefits of educating women and girls. Women’s literacy rates were found to be inversely related to fertility rates (Cochrane, 1979) and child mortality rates (Caldwell, 1979). The book of King and Hill’s (1993) book,
B. V. Street and N. H. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition, Volume 2: Literacy, 179–190. #2008 Springer Science+Business Media LLC.
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A N N A R O B I N S O N - PA N T
Women’s Education in Developing Countries: Barriers, Benefits and Policies, was a major landmark in bringing together these statistical studies on these health linkages, as well as on the links between literacy and income and employment (see Schultz on ‘Returns to Women’s Education’, ibid.). This body of research shared the starting point that literate women had different characteristics and behaved in different ways from illiterate women (LeVine, LeVine, Richman, Uribe, Correa, and Miller, 1991), perpetuating a stereotype of the ‘blind’ illiterate woman to be found in many policy documents (see Robinson-Pant, 2004). The statistical evidence appeared to support Summer’s (foreword in King and Hill, 1993
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