Education from a gender equality perspective

Over the years, education has focused on access and parity — that is, closing the enrollment gap between girls and boys — while insufficient attention has been paid to retention and achievement or the quality and relevance of education. The primary focus on girls’ access to education may overlook boys’ educational needs. This approach also fails to confront the norms and behaviors that perpetuate inequality. This paper presents the Gender Equality Framework, which has been designed to address this inequality.

A tool for education programmers, the framework helps ensure that education projects meet the needs of all learners. Using an approach that takes into account the relations and interaction between males and females (also known as gender dynamics), the Gender Equality Framework addresses four dimensions of equality in education. These are: equality of access, equality in the learning process, equality of educational outcomes, and equality of external results. Sections on each of the four dimensions include concrete activities that can be implemented as part of an overall strategy to achieve gender equality in education.

In addition to presenting the framework, this report also explores topics such as the relationship between education quality and gender equality and the distinction between parity and equity. 

The report concludes that quality, retention, and achievement are essential elements of an education strategy designed to ensure that boys and girls maximise their full potential. As the Gender Equality in Education Framework indicates, addressing issues of access is insufficient to ensure that boys and girls receive the maximum benefit from their education. Getting children into school is crucial; ensuring that they stay in school, learn, and achieve requires more. The report states that the four dimensions of the framework provide planners with a systematic way of addressing the components necessary for ensuring a relevant, high quality education for all learners.

Recommendations are presented, including:

• ensure that gender concerns are identified and addressed at the highest level of politics and public policy
• recognise that there are myriad entry points for addressing gender inequalities, which include enrollment policies and practices, curriculum relevance, teacher deployment, learning environments, security, new technologies, and resource allocation
• analyse how specific educational programmes and policies impact girls and boys differently, taking into account different roles, responsibilities, needs, and interests and address them during the project design process
• integrate gender awareness components into pre- and in-service teacher training
• incorporate gender considerations into activities to develop curricula and learning materials
• identify and report on indicators such as girls’ and boys’ net and gross enrollment, gender parity in enrollment, equality in educational outcomes, and girls’ and boys’ completion rates.