Return-Path: <nifl-womenlit@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id g7TGXPX27253; Thu, 29 Aug 2002 12:33:25 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 12:33:25 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <sd6e13f0.011@langate.gsu.edu> Errors-To: alcrsb@langate.gsu.edu Reply-To: nifl-womenlit@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-womenlit@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-womenlit@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: "Daphne Greenberg" <alcdgg@langate.gsu.edu> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-womenlit@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-WOMENLIT:2255] Women and literacy issues X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII X-Mailer: Novell GroupWise Internet Agent 6.0.2 Status: O Content-Length: 7114 Lines: 30 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. Since Gail will be talking to the UN, I figured that the focus should be international, with additional US material added. If you have time/interest, please read my summary and let me know what you think. Please feel free to be critical-especially if you think I am missing an important point, or if your idea is not represented. It is about 3 and 1/2 pages long. By the way, when I give this to Gail, I will also present her with all of your posts. This way she can also add your specific posts when she talks to the UN delegates. I will need your thoughts by the Sept. 1, if I am going to make changes in time to give them to her. Here it is: 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, child care 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). Child care issues prevent many women from attending programs, because low cost/high quality child care 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.
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