Gender in education: policy discourse and challenges

This article examines the socio-economic and cultural milieu of girls in Bangladesh and how it erodes the benefits of education. Laws and rules, even basic human rights, are unknown to many women. Economically active women too are affected by cultural norms and social taboos which reinforce their helplessness. Gender discrimination, especially for women, and inequity, physical, and verbal abuse persist. Women's empowerment is resisted by some women, and this poses a barrier to girls' education, as evident from a rights perspective. Women's subordination to men is conditioned by a whole range of traditional practices embedded in the family and kin-group. Women's scope of work is mostly limited to domestic chores and care: education investment, borne out of the instrumentalist approach, is rendered ineffective as it is quite dependent upon socio-economic status and concomitant social structure. Education investment must uphold a capabilities approach to achieve sustained outcomes in education.