Women's Day celebrations on March 8 brought to light the plight of women in the developing and the least developed countries across the globe. There were reports published on violence against housewives, widespread gender discrimination at workplaces and absence of opportunities for the advancement of women resource development. But mostly the day ended in slogan mongering exercises, which sidelined basic issues that needed focused attention.
Pakistan is one of those countries where inequality between men and women is gradually increasing. The trickle down effect of this phenomenon has been complex. It has retarded performance of the national economy, which is something beyond foreign exchange reserves and performance of stock market, increased the number of people living below poverty line and has supported the unemployed population to multiply freely.
As a natural consequence of these unkind factors that have suppressed improvement in the Pakistani society, the immediate victims are the health, housing and education sectors which have begun to shrink and give rise to lawlessness, chaos and mob rule. Though there seems to be no relevance or co-relation between the unkind factors that, when combined together, breed "socially acceptable crime" but eminent psychiatrists prescribe proper housing, health and education facilities as a prerequisite for a healthy and crime-free society. Pakistan has been unfortunate, as proper attention has never been paid to its human quality development programmes.
This observation gets further strength from the fact that Pakistan has been ranked at the 144th position out of 175 countries in terms of human development index. The index has a number of factors within its fold. It is complex and is reflective of poor performance of economic, social and political reforms that have been attempted over a period of more than fifty years.
Compared with it, there is China which gained independence in 1949, Malaysia in 1957 and Bangladesh in 1971, have all achieved certain level of progress that is sustainable and growing. These countries have stable political system, growing economy and improving human living conditions. Even in South Asian Association of Regional Co-operation (SAARC) region, Pakistan is at the lowest stage of its progress. Only with respect to education Pakistan ranks among the bottom 15 countries and seventh (last) in the SAARC region. Even Bhutan spends 5.2 percent of its GDP on education as compared to 1.8 percent of Pakistan. It has declined from 2.6 percent in 1990 to 1.8 percent in 2000.
Despite low investment, Pakistan's adult literacy rate is 56 percent, which is well above the average of 37 percent for sub-Saharan Africa and 44 percent for South Asia. Let us look into the state of affairs in the education sector with special reference to female literacy position.
The net primary enrolment rate in Pakistan is 46 percent, the lowest in South Asia. Similarly, the combined enrolment rate for primary, secondary and tertiary education is 36 percent, which is again well below the regional average of 54 percent.
It is unfortunate that during the March 8 celebrations women organizations did not emphasize on female education as forcefully as they emphasized on Hadood Ordinance, Karokari and honour killing. As long as women are left to be uneducated and illiterate, these crimes would continue to take place. The need to remove this should begin from targeting gender disparity, which should be narrowed down in the first instance. Gender disparity in Pakistan in the enrolment in schools is 1: 0.6, which is the lowest in the region.
During the last 30 years, the literacy rate has increased from 21 to 43 percent or less than one percent per annum. This rate is hopelessly slow and would not bring about any significant change even after fifty years from today.
According to estimates based on the primary data of the Pakistan integrated household survey 2001-02, male and female literacy rates are 57 and 29 percent respectively. But this should not be a reason to be optimistic about the improvement in the future. The low level of female literacy is alarming and would never catch up with the literacy rate level of male population if the efforts that are being made by the public sector educational institutions are not supplemented by the NGOs committed to female education.
The state of female literacy in the four provinces is depressing as the disparity among the male and female literacy rates show. This disparity has many reasons but is mainly indicative of rural male attitude towards rural females' educational needs.
Adult literacy rates 2001-02 shows that urban Pakistan has 43 percent literacy; Punjab 44 percent, Sindh 45 percent, NWFP 35 percent and Balochistan 32 percent. In rural Pakistan 18 percent female are literate, whereas in the rural Punjab 22 percent, Sindh 11 percent, NWFP 13 percent and Balochistan 7 percent. This is a worrying state of affair and needs immediate attention of the NGOs and other women's rights organizations so that reasons for the low rate of literacy could be ascertained and remedied.
Trends in drop-out rates within public primary schools have increased over a period of four years. In 1996-97 Punjab recorded 38 percent, Sindh 42 percent, NWFP 29 percent and Balochistan 30 percent. During 1997-98 Punjab recorded 48 percent drop out rate, Sindh 45 percent, NWFP 35 percent, Balochistan 34 percent. The overall Pakistan drop-out rate was recorded as 46 percent.
During the year 1998-99 the drop-out rate further increased to 49 percent, Punjab recorded 54 percent, Sindh 41 percent, NWFP 37 percent and Balochistan 27 percent.
The year 1999-00 saw further decline in the interest in education as the national drop-out rate increased from 49 percent to 59 percent, Punjab recorded 64 percent, Sindh 47 percent, NWFP 49 percent and Balochistan 41 percent.
The increase in the drop out rate was not without creating gender disparities. Gender disparities also tend to co-exist with regional disparities. A gender-segregated analysis of benefit incidence of educational expenditure corroborates the presence of this phenomenon. It can be seen that the share of education subsidy for females enrolled is lower than that of males enrolled for all levels of education and in all provinces. This disparity is more pronounced in tertiary education than in other levels in all provinces except Punjab.
The gender gap is the widest in the case of tertiary education in Balochistan, where for every rupee of subsidy devoted to males, only 13 paisa is devoted to females. Distribution of gender segregated benefit incidence of subsidy on education - per capita subsidy in Punjab, Rs 1475 male, Rs 1233 female in primary education. The percentage share of male is 55 and female 45. The per capita subsidy for secondary education is Rs 675 male and Rs 455 female. The percentage share of male is 61 and female 39. The per capita subsidy for tertiary level for male Rs 229, female Rs 179 and in terms of percentage 55 male and 45 female.
In Sindh the per capita subsidy for primary education for male is Rs 1422, female Rs 1011 and in terms of percentage it is 59 and 41. The secondary level subsidy is Rs 1034 for male and for female Rs 626 and in percentage term it is 64 and 36. The tertiary level subsidy is Rs 371 for male and Rs 115 for female, in percentage term male 79 and 21 female.
The NWFP primary scenario is different from the other provinces. The subsidy for primary level is Rs1492 for male and for female Rs 945, in percentage term it is 63 male, female 37; secondary level subsidy for male is Rs 1694 and for female Rs 697, in terms of percentage it is male 70 and female 30. The tertiary level subsidy is Rs 536 male and Rs 209 female and in percentage terms male 71 and female 29.
Balochistan provides subsidy for primary education Rs 1019 for male and Rs 636 for female and in percentage term 66 male and 34 female. At the secondary level subsidy for male is Rs 1563 and Rs 539 for female and in percentage term it is 77 and 23. The tertiary level subsidy is Rs 631 for male, Rs 87 for female and in percentage term the share is 89 male and female 11. (Provincial and federal budget 1999-2000; PSDP annual review 2002-03)
Social return to education and the non monetary social benefits of education are characterized by relationships between education and various social indicators pertaining to population, fertility, health, democratization, law and order, environment etc.
There is strong relationship between education and fertility, child and maternal health, infant mortality, and early marriage and motherhood. Most of these variables demonstrate the social benefits of high population growth has several adverse macro and micro level impacts on development indicators.
One direct effect of high fertility rate is that, in the short run, it raises the dependency ratio and puts greater pressure on the earning members to cater to the needs of non-earning members of the household. The phenomenon inhabits efforts to reduce poverty.
There are several plausible reasons why women with some education, display lower fertility rate pattern than uneducated women. The following summarizes very briefly, and without professing to produce an exhaustive list of mechanism, why an individual woman's education is presumed to influence fertility desire: 1) high opportunity costs of childbearing could be involved in some types of work that may be offered to the better educated women; 2) educated women are more likely to send their children to schools.
A review of the programmes that were carried out by the NGOs and women activists on March 8 - Women's Day - shows that social issues such as education, health, shelter and economic empowerment of women did not come up for discussion in any estrous manner. What dominated the scene was Karokari, honour killing, Hadood Ordinance and domestic violence against women. These issues have merit and to counter them with force an effective universal female literacy programme free from disparities in terms of policy and resources seems to be indispensable.