by Daphne Greenberg
This is a brief article written by Daphne Greenberg summarizing some of the issues important to a discussion of women and literacy. It was posted in August of 2002 to the nifl-womenlit discussion list and can also be found in its archives.
A big thanks to everyone who posted their thoughts about women and literacy issues. I have put together, what I hope represents at least some of the issues regarding women and literacy.
Traditionally, nations have emphasized the education and literacy development
of boys and men. In the two decades following the first United Nations (UN)
Conference on Women and Development in Mexico in 1975, raising literacy levels
of females has been a focus of international development agencies. Unfortunately,
as Bhandari and Smith (1997) note, progress has been disappointing, particularly
in rural areas. In fact, while in 1980, 62.8% of the world's women were illiterate,
in 1995, it was 63.8%. Except for a few countries (particularly Jamaica and
Lesotho), women have lower levels of literacy than men do; in developing countries,
this disparity averages a 21 percent difference. Another way of looking at this,
from 1980 to 1995, the illiterate population of men fell from 327 to 318 million,
while the numbers of illiterate women grew from 551 to 565 million (Aksornkool,
2001).
Research has shown that simply teaching reading and writing mechanics, does
not motivate rural women of Third World countries unless the instruction is
accompanied by the acquisition of functional literacy skills focused on everyday
needs (Bhandari & Smith, 1997). In addition, many literacy instructional
programs focus on women only as homemakers, ignoring the fact that the majority
of women must earn a living and therefore need additional types of literacy
instruction. For example, Suderman (1995) looked at an adult literacy textbook
in Egypt: "I leafed through the whole textbook looking for pictures of
women and found only one, though every story was accompanied by a picture. In
this picture, every woman was pregnant or accompanied by small children, or
both. I asked what the story was about and was told the subject was family planning.
The agricultural work Egyptian women undertake, participation in the paid labor
force in a variety of capacities, food preparation, household work, beer brewing,
and all the other types of work with which women engage, were completely ignored."
Women around the world face many obstacles when they try to get involved in
adult literacy programming:
• Many classes are scheduled during hours when they need to be working. Or, they are just plain too tired to attend classes. For example, poor female peasants who live in traditional agricultural societies are often the main producers of food and cash crops, and engage in labor intensive 15 hour work days of tilling, planting, weeding, harvesting, and walking long distances to fetch water and firewood (Bhalalusea,1996).
• Husbands often do not allow wives to go to classes at night, or to mixed classes (Dawson,1996).
• It is often not safe for women in many countries to walk unescorted by male companions and therefore they cannot reach the adult literacy programs.
As Walter (1997) points out, literacy training begins as an issue for females
when they are young:
• Families around the world often make much more of an effort to see that their male children receive an education.
• Female children are often required to stay at home to help take care of the family.
• In some cultures, a female may be less marriageable if she is too educated.
Why should we care about providing literacy instruction to females around the world?
• Humanitarian reasons: To increase the literacy skills of individuals who want their literacy skills increased.
• It has been noted that in many countries, the most efficient way to increase sanitation, hygiene and immunization issues, is to educate the women.
• Sticht and McDonald, 1990 note that worldwide,
a) Higher educated women show higher economic productivity
b) Higher educated women provide better pre-natal care; produce more full term babies; provide better post-natal care.
c) Higher educated women produce higher participation rates in their children's schooling
In the United States, it was only in the last century that women finally gained
full access to education. According to the 1993 NALS, approximately 20% of women
scored in the lowest level of the survey. Twenty-three percent of all women
aged 25 and over have not gone beyond 11th grade and 28% of women aged 65 and
older have not gone beyond 8th grade. As Carmack (1992) has noted, women continue
to be grouped in a few low earning occupations, and lack of education is one
of the reasons for this. Lack of literacy is therefore tied to both economic
and social issues.
Why do we have a female adult literacy issue in the United States? Cuban and
Hayes (1996) note that while boys and girls share many of the same reasons of
why they drop out of school, girls have the added issues of marriage, pregnancy,
family violence, and abuse. While in school, it is now known that girls have
been systematically underrepresented in identification for learning disability
services (Young, Kim, & Gerber, 1999). Similarly, while men and women have
the same obstacles about attending literacy programs, women have the added issues
of lack of family support, childcare needs, and multiple responsibilities to
many different family members. Lack of family support comes in the form of economic
and moral support. As Isserlis (1998) has pointed out, many have women live
with partners who do not want them to become more literate/independent and this
impacts on their ability to participate in classes. Some women are not allowed
to leave their home, and therefore cannot attend classes (either due to cultural
restrictions on women, and/or domestic abuse reasons). Childcare issues prevent
many women from attending programs, because low cost/high quality childcare
is often nonexistent for most of the women who want and need to attend adult
literacy classes. Add to these obstacles, issues of disabilities, race, poverty,
harassment, and
health issues (and the list goes on), it is difficult for many women to attend
and persist in adult literacy classes.
In conclusion, until we live in a world where leaders value the importance of education, and the interrelationships between care-taking, relationships, economics, power dynamics, health, culture, disabilities, generational transfer of skills, and literacy, women will continue to lag behind men in their literacy skills and generations of children will be born into communities where low literacy is an issue. Leaders of the world need to see the connections between the obstacles women face as learners and the obstacles women face as they try to lift themselves and their children out of poverty. Only until systems that oppress women based on their gender, class and race are obliterated, women and the families that they are responsible for raising will continue to face these obstacles or others that keep them poor and without access to the knowledge bases and literacy skills that they need to be powerful, independent and financially secure. Finally, women and children make up the majority of the world's population. It therefore makes sense to work to end the obstacles that would prevent women and children from obtaining economic, spiritual, physical and emotional health and growth. It is not just a societal issue, it is also a humanitarian issue. Women and children deserve access to meaningful education because that is what they deserve in their own right and not for any other means or purpose.
(c) Copyright, Daphne Greenberg, August 2002
This article was placed on this site with the permission
of the author.