Education is not only an end but a means to realise other desirable ends like reducing poverty, overcoming discrimination, ensuring equality and promoting inclusive growth. Higher education which is considered a training ground for professional, career-oriented future is a potential instrument for bringing about the needed social transformation. The need for equal access of women to higher education is emphasised in the national policy for education when it states, “Wider women access to vocational, technical and professional education at all levels breaking gender stereotypes will ensure better financial stability for women and lead to national development.”
Women’s education is a prerequisite for the society’s all-round development in as much as a strong co-relationship is established between female education and development indicators in various studies. For example, the infant mortality rate (IMR), birth rate and total fertility rate are negatively co-related to girls’ achievement in education.
The Indian higher education system consists of colleges, universities, institutions of national and international importance, autonomous institutions with the status of deemed universities. The system witnessed particularly high growth in the last decade, with enrollment of students increasing at a rate of 10.8 per cent. The private sector has played an instrumental role in this growth.
No doubt, substantial expansion of higher educational facilities for women has been achieved in the process. Women enrolment in higher education which was less than 10 per cent of the total on the eve of Independence went up to 44 per cent during 2010-11. This, however, should not be a ground for complacency as the enrolment in higher education itself is a smaller part of the total population. The total enrolment during the period was only 27.5 million. So, the near gender equality that seems to have been achieved is at best limited to the privileged section, which made it possible to enter into higher education. Moreover, India represents a picture of contrast when it comes to education and employment opportunities for girls in rural and urban areas and between different communities. Cultural, social and economic factors still prevent girls from getting educational opportunities in rural areas.
In Odisha, the SC & ST communities constitute about 39 per cent of the population, but the access of SC and ST girls to higher education is marginal. An example: The number of SC, ST girls admitted in engineering college under the BPUT (Biju Patnaik University of Technology) hardly constitutes 1% of the total seats in 2004.
India’s higher education sector is still plagued with several challenges like its relatively low GER, inequitable access to higher education by community, gender and geography and inadequacy of high-quality research and educational institutions, resulting in sub-optimal outcomes. India’s GER of 16 per cent was much below the world average of 27 per cent as well as of other emerging countries like China (26%) and Brazil (36%) in 2010. There is a wide disparity in the GER in higher education across States, localities, communities, and gender in India.
The representation of weaker sections of the society including women still remains low as measured against their share in the total population even after enforcement of reservation of seats in all higher educational institutions
Reasons for low participation of girls in higher education: Poverty: 37 per cent of people in Odisha are below poverty line, for whom the cost of higher education poses a great problem. Higher education for girls is often thought in term of only general education because it is relatively cheaper. Technical education, especially provided by private institution, is beyond the reach of poor families. So, the majority of women enrolled in higher education are confined to nonprofessional graduate-level courses only.
Non-availability of adequate higher education facilities in rural areas also prevents talented girls from opting for it. In very poor families, the girls start earning from very childhood, and sending them to distant places for education amounts to loss of source of income for the parents.
Social factors are even more outweighing in creating hurdles for higher education for women. For social and cultural reasons, the girl often doesn’t receive same medical, emotional and educational attention as her male counterpart. The girl child is seen as a burden, a bearer of exorbitant dowry. Though there is a change in the attitude of upper and middle income group in cities, and higher education for girls is taken for granted, it is not with a career motive but rather as preparation for meeting the ultimate goals of her life like matrimony and motherhood. The objective of higher education to ensure women’s autonomy in decision-making, freedom of expression and control over resources is hardly achieved because of social hurdles.
Frequent cases of violence against women contribute negatively to parents’ consent for higher education of their girls. In a patriarchal social structure, parents are not expected to use their daughters’ income which discourages investment in girls’ education
How to meet the challenges: First, the attitude has to be changed and women are to be recognised as an essential human resource base. They are not only to be supported; they are to support the family equally.
Higher education needs to be reoriented to increase women’s access to traditionally male-dominated courses. Curricular reform should include compulsory exposure to different kinds of work in the form of jobs and internship during vacations. Evaluation has to be done intermittently to assess how far education has made them capable for critical thinking and ability to solve problems.
More incentives like scholarships, free ships have to be provided to deserving girls so that the education expenses don’t act as an obstacle.
Providing gender-fair education is a challenge before the society. So, gender studies programmes that are platforms for awareness generation must be incorporated in the curriculum. Affirmative action and quota systems, reform programmes to remove bias from curriculum, gender sensitivity training for teachers and counselors and active recruitment of women in non tradition fields of study are essential.
The present system more or less caters to the requirements of urban elite to the disadvantage of about 72 per cent of the people living in rural areas. There is an urgent need to introduce policy interventions to reverse the trend and reshape the system so as to make it poor-friendly and rural-oriented. While establishing elite institutions like IITs and IIMs in cities, the Government should also establish quality institutions in rural areas with increased subsidy to enable the rural poor to take advantage of the facilities. It is good that the government of India proposes to establish 373 new colleges in the educationally backward districts where the GER is reported to be as low as 4 per cent. But it is not clear as to how many of them would be exclusively meant for women.
Over recent years, women are moving from general courses to professional courses which lead to jobs and careers. There are changes in expectations of parents and young women in big cities. Parental expectations and young women’s aspiration have been push factors in a shift of disciplinary choices in the post-liberalisation period. But this is at best limited to an insignificant proportion of the population in big cities. This has to be extended to rural areas through sensitisation about the potentialities of women.
(Dr Bedabati Mohanty is a former Professor in Economics, Utkal University. Mobile-9437006755)