Gender Inequalities in Education

Introduction

We may be in 2025, but gender inequalities are more topical than ever, and unfortunately we have to accept a sad observation: being female does not always make it simpler to train, to be educated and to aspire to a certain level of ambition.

In a world where, in some regions, it is still very difficult to see girls pursue STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), and where many families, even equally educated ones, prefer to send boys to school and confine girls to household chores, it appears more important than ever to work harder to fight gender inequalities.

Of a total world population of 8.2 billion (Source: 2024 World Population Prospects), 49.6% are women, i.e. 4.06 billion, and 4.14 billion are men (50.4%) (Source: Our World in Data).

Giving up the fight against gender inequalities, or giving up on intensifying it, would therefore mean handicapping a large share of the world's population and severely handicapping the development of human potential as well as sustainable development.

In this analysis, let us see how to define gender inequalities, their manifestations and the factors that aggravate them, what has been put in place so far, and finish with current challenges and a few prospects.

I – Gender inequalities: definition, manifestations and factors

A – Definition

Gender inequalities in education refer to all the gaps between girls and boys in access, quality, continuation and school results. These inequalities can concern school enrolment, academic success, career guidance or future opportunities in the labour market. They are part of a broader framework of social, economic and cultural inequalities, and are often reinforced by patriarchal norms, discrimination or insufficiently inclusive public policies.

B – Manifestations and factors

Listing all the manifestations of gender inequalities or their aggravating factors would be a particularly complex mission, but among them we can cite a few:

• On the socio-cultural level

Early marriage, teenage pregnancy, family expectations favouring the education of boys, and persistent gender stereotypes, so much so that we sometimes find them, explicitly or implicitly, even in school textbooks. School and career guidance also tends to steer boys towards STEM fields and send girls towards the "SES" tracks, that is Social, Education and Health, not to mention teachers who sometimes make remarks guided by these stereotypes on a recurring daily basis. These remarks tend to lower girls' and women's self-perception and push them to aim for intermediate tracks or jobs, to the detriment of their potential.

• On the economic level

Household poverty, the direct and indirect costs of schooling, and domestic or farm work imposed on girls are major problems.

• On the institutional and school level

The lack of suitable infrastructure (separate toilets for girls and boys, transport), gender-based violence at school (many girls are victims of harassment on the way from home to school or school to home), and even within schools, where teachers tend to engage in relationships with female pupils, including when they are still very young, and school curricula that reproduce inequalities.

• On the security and humanitarian level

Conflicts and humanitarian crises lead to forced displacement, school closures and an increased risk of sexual violence and exploitation. Although boys are also affected by this problem, in situations of insecurity families tend to fear more for girls going to class, for fear of violence on the way or within the school grounds, because in such contexts heightened insecurity increases the likelihood of exposure for girls.

II – Response mechanisms to gender inequalities

The mechanisms for responding to gender inequalities deserve to be welcomed and encouraged, because the response of international institutions keeps progressing in this direction, with a strong will to cooperate with states and NGOs to coordinate this action.

A – International policies

We can mention here:

• The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 4 and 5, which aim to ensure equitable education and promote gender equality by 2030 (Source: The SDGs, 17 goals to change the world by 2030).

• The UNESCO Strategy for Gender Equality in and through Education 2019–2025 (Source: UNESCO Strategy for Gender Equality in and through Education 2019–2025), a strategy to transform education systems so as to guarantee that girls and boys, women and men, enjoy the same opportunities, not only in access to education but also in content, contexts, outcomes and empowerment.

• The initiatives of the GPE (Global Partnership for Education), which supports more than 80 low-income countries in developing and financing gender-responsive education plans. The GPE sets up incentive funds through which countries receive additional funding if they integrate parity and inclusion policies into their national plans.

• Many other programmes set up by international institutions and NGOs, such as UNICEF and its programmes for girl/boy parity and inclusive education, the "Education for All" campaign launched at the World Forum in Dakar (2000), and campaigns such as "Let Girls Learn" and "Educate Girls, End Poverty".

B – Some good practices observed in the field

Although gender inequality is a global issue, let us focus on Africa to see some good practices observed in certain countries:

• Rwanda implements strong gender equality policies and records a high rate of girls' schooling as well as remarkable female representation in political life
• In Bangladesh, there are scholarship programmes to encourage families to send their daughters to secondary school
• In India, the "Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao" (save the girl child, educate the girl child) initiative was set up to fight discrimination and encourage schooling
• In Ethiopia, community schools have been created close to villages to reduce the distance girls travel and limit insecurity on the way
• Ghana and Kenya run scholarship programmes for girls
• In Sudan, we can mention UNICEF's Skills4Girls Programme, which aims to train girls in trades traditionally considered men's jobs.

III – Current challenges and prospects

Despite these considerable efforts by the various actors, challenges persist, but prospects exist all the same.

A – Current challenges

Among the current and persistent challenges are:

• Extreme poverty, humanitarian crises, climate change and armed conflicts, which affect girls more, exposing them to all kinds of violence
• Digital education is also a challenge, with a digital divide that accentuates inequalities of access, especially for girls in rural areas (the gender digital divide)
• The gender stereotypes mentioned earlier are also a challenge.

B – Prospects

We nevertheless observe a growing female leadership in education systems, as well as a cultural transformation in the role of men and boys in reducing inequalities. This evolution is uneven across regions of the world, but the dynamic is encouraging.

Conclusion

Although much remains to be done on gender inequalities, the efforts recorded to date deserve encouragement, because public and civil society awareness of these issues is growing day by day.

Among possible solutions, we could consider women-focused training to introduce them to digital technology and its benefits, because in today's fully digitalised world, anyone outside the digital sphere will find themselves deeply limited, even handicapped, regardless of their intrinsic potential.

We could also set up distributions of "digital packs" to provide computers and mobile phones to girls and women in certain isolated or remote regions.

To address the problem of Internet access, contracts with telephone operators to simplify and reduce the cost of Internet connection for girls could also be envisaged.

The topic of mentoring is also more topical than ever, because the possibility for girls and women to identify with role models who have broken the "glass ceiling" could be a catalyst for their potential.

This mentoring process will also help strengthen the self-perception and self-confidence of girls and women, without which no lasting transformation can exist.

Sonia BEGUIDE