• Working children and gender

Working children and gender

In the Asia-Pacific region, girls’ labour, official and unofficial, continues to constitute a major obstacle to accelerating progress towards achieving gender parity and equality in primary and secondary education by 2015.

This policy brief summarises the causes and consequences of girls’ child labour on their educational opportunities and describes some of the instruments and strategies in place to reduce girls’ labour. It also provides insights into current good practice, assisting policy-makers and practitioners to better understand and address the issues for getting girls out of work and into school.

The brief describes three innovative initiatives to get girls out of work and into school in China, India and the Philippines. These initiatives incorporate methods such as training girls to be peer educators; direct assistance to cover education costs; incorporating life skills and sex education; creating participatory "girl-friendly" environments and outreach education for communities; community mobilisation against bonded labour; training local girl-child activists to educate communities.

Finally, the brief sets out key actions required to increase girls’ participation in education:

• cooperation between education and social planning agencies to plan, monitor and evaluate efforts
• implement measures to attract and retain girls in schools, such as security and sanitation, and girl-friendly methodologies
• initiatives to attract higher numbers of women teachers to teach in rural and slum areas, and train male teachers in girl-friendly pedagogical approaches
• ensure that vocational training empowers girls by offering practical life skills and can lead to further formal vocational training
• more analysis of good practice
• integrate the concerns of working girls into the Agenda for EFA and Inclusive Education
• use the role of girl activists and community mobilisation to address local attitudes and behaviours
• recognise and address family poverty through livelihood strategies for parents.

The paper concludes that the provision of education for girls that is accessible, affordable, of good quality, and relevant is ultimately a question of political will to adequately invest in education for girls.

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