USAID Women in Development (WID): Gender Equity in Education

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KEY PUBLICATIONS

EQUATE Technical Briefs: Gender, Education, and HIV/AIDS (09/20/2007 PDF)
Gender Equality in Education: a Dynamic Framework (9/20/2007 PDF)
Glossary of Gender Terms (9/20/2007 PDF)
Training Guide: Continuum of Approaches for Achieving Gender Integration in Programming: A Decision-Making Tool for Education Officers; 2007 [PDF 2.8MB]
The Safe Schools Program: Quantitative Research Instrument to Measure School-Related Gender-Based Violence ; 12/06 [PDF, 1.39MB]
Unsafe Schools: A Literature Review of School-Related Gender-Based Violence in Developing Countries; 09/03 [PDF,444kb]

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Gender Equality in Education

EQUATE collaborates to "Bring Boys on Board"

Image of children at the Turning Point: Sharing Successes and Bringing
Boys on Board COnferfence, South Africa.

The EQUATE Project presented sessions on gender equality and school-related gender-based violence (SRGBV) at a conference in South Africa.
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Education is universally acknowledged to benefit individuals and promote national development. Education expands the opportunities and life choices for both boys and girls. Worldwide, however, 60 million girls remain out of school.

USAID has been working to close the gap between boys and girls by assessing the degree of educational disadvantage that girls face, identifying gender-related obstacles and implementing remedies to remove and overcome them.

Effective Strategies for Educating Girls

An effective strategy for educating girls needs to include attention to access and enrollment, as well as to quality and achievement. Girls in developing countries often come up against teaching practices, textbooks and other learning materials in schools that promote gender stereotypes that are detrimental to their academic achievement.

Unsafe school environments also pose challenges to girls to complete their education.

Keeping girls in school requires that parents, community members, educators, policymakers, and donors look beyond enrollment and address larger, contextual issues, such as the impact that inequities between girls and boys has on educational quality.

WID Office Approach to Gender Equality

As a matter of policy, USAID places major emphasis on female access to basic education. In all cases, USAID emphasizes educational equity for girls and women as a strategy for achieving educational equality for all. —USAID's Education Strategy: Improving Lives Through Learning

The Office of Women in Development's approach to gender equality in education includes:

Testing innovative pilot programs to reduce school-related gender-based violence;
Developing practical tools for USAID staff and implementing partners to design, implement and evaluate education programs that address equitable access and quality with a gender perspective; and
Bringing attention to the norms and behaviors that perpetuate inequalities in schools and the effect gender dynamics have on educational success or failure for both girls and boys.

Kaqchikel Mayan girls look at their new school books in Sumpango, Sacatepequez, Guatemala.

Worldwide, 60 million girls remain out of school.

Current Activities

Safe Schools Program
EQUATE: Achieving Equality in Education

Please see the Activity Archives for a list of completed Education activities.

Key Publications

EQUATE Technical Briefs: Gender, Education, and HIV/AIDS (09/20/2007 PDF)

Gender Equality in Education: a Dynamic Framework (9/20/2007 PDF)

Glossary of Gender Terms (9/20/2007 PDF)

Training Guide: Continuum of Approaches for Achieving Gender Integration in Programming: A Decision-Making Tool for Education Officers; 1/07 [PDF 2.8MB]

The Safe Schools Program: Quantitative Research Instrument to Measure School-Related Gender-Based Violence ; 12/06 [PDF, 1.39MB]

Unsafe Schools: A Literature Review of School-Related Gender-Based Violence in Developing Countries; 09/03 [PDF,444kb]

The publications below are listed by region and country, and then in alphabetical order by title.

Global

General

Girls' education and crises

05/01/2001 (830KB)

This document summarizes the results of an examination of various types of crises, including severe economic downturn, epidemic disease, and internal conflict, on the participation of girls in primary schooling. It summarizes the general trends in girls' education across the countries that have received USAID assistance over the last 30 years, discusses the principal findings regarding girls' education in these countries during periods of crisis, and draws implications from these findings. The document was produced under the Girls' Education Monitoring System (GEMS) project.

User manual for the Cohort Tracking System (CoTrack)

01/01/2003 (1.1MB)

This is the user's manual for the Cohort Tracking System (CoTrack), which was designed to collect and analyze individual student enrollment data from schools offering from pre-school through Grade 12. Cohorts are defined as the set of students enrolled in a grade in a given year. The manual was produced under the Girls' Education Monitoring System (GEMS) project.