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Pakistan
Female Education
Comparison of data for men and women reveals significant disparity
in educational attainment. By 1992, among people older than fifteen
years of age, 22 percent of women were literate, compared with
49 percent of men. The comparatively slow rate of improvement
for women is reflected in the fact that between 1980 and 1989,
among women aged fifteen to twenty-four, 25 percent were literate.
United Nations sources say that in 1990 for every 100 girls of
primary school age there were only thirty in school; among girls
of secondary school age, only thirteen out of 100 were in school;
and among girls of the third level, grades nine and ten, only
1.5 out of 100 were in school. Slightly higher estimates by the
National Education Council for 1990 stated that 2.5 percent of
students--3 percent of men and 2 percent of women- -between the
ages of seventeen and twenty-one were enrolled at the degree level.
Among all people over twenty-five in 1992, women averaged a mere
0.7 year of schooling compared with an average of 2.9 years for
men.
The discrepancy between rural and urban areas is even more marked.
In 1981 only 7 percent of women in rural areas were literate,
compared with 35 percent in urban areas. Among men, these rates
were 27 and 57 percent, respectively. Pakistan's low female literacy
rates are particularly confounding because these rates are analogous
to those of some of the poorest countries in the world.
Pakistan has never had a systematic, nationally coordinated effort
to improve female primary education, despite its poor standing.
It was once assumed that the reasons behind low female school
enrollments were cultural, but research conducted by the Ministry
for Women's Development and a number of international donor agencies
in the 1980s revealed that danger to a woman's honor was parents'
most crucial concern. Indeed, reluctance to accept schooling for
women turned to enthusiasm when parents in rural Punjab and rural
Balochistan could be guaranteed their daughters' safety and, hence,
their honor.
Data as of April 1994
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