‘Whatever she may study, she can’t escape from washing dishes’: Gender inequity in secondary education – Evidence from a longitudinal study in India

Journal article

As universal elementary education is close to realisation there are concerns about secondary education meeting the pressure of increasing number of children moving into secondary levels. Secondary education is today seen not as a luxury, but as a necessary stepping stone towards a better and brighter future. It has been suggested that secondary education may serve as a pathway for students’ advancement, or may appear as the main bottleneck preventing the equitable expansion of educational opportunities (World Bank, 2005).

Despite Millennium Development Goal 3 (MDG3) having the target of the elimination of gender disparity in primary, secondary and tertiary education by 2015, gender equity remained unrealised. Although there are many more girls attending school today than ever before, gender equity in secondary school participation remains elusive in many low-income countries. The UNESCO-UIS (2015) study reported that more than 40% of all out-of-school adolescents live in South Asia and girls’ completion of secondary school remains low (UNGEI, 2014). Globally, 83 per cent of lower secondary-school-age children are in either primary or secondary school, dropping to less than 70 per cent in low-income countries.

Authors: Singh, R; Mukherjee, P

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis
• Journal: Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education
• Volume: 48
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 262-280
• Publication date: 2017-04-20
• Acceptance date: 2017-03-09
• DOI: 10.1080/03057925.2017.1306434
• EISSN: 1469-3623
• ISSN: 0305-7925