Education & Employment

The target of UN Millennium Development Goal #2 is to eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015. However, inequalities in access to education persist, especially in areas like sub-Saharan Africa and western Asia, and the goal is unlikely to be met. [1]

The children most likely to drop out of school or to not attend at all are often girls and those from poorer households or living in rural areas. Girls are kept at home to perform household tasks, tend the crops, livestock and other children, while their brothers may be sent to school. If school fees must be paid, a family is more likely to pay them for their boys. Women and girls in many parts of the world spend a large portion of their day fetching water. Girls often do not attend school because their schools lack private sanitation facilities.

In Islamic cultures, the high value placed on their chastity and strict limitations on their freedom can prevent girls from travelling even short distances to school. The shortage of trained female teachers exacerbates the problem, as does the absence of separate toilets for girls.

High poverty rates and early marriage can force girls to drop out of school and exposes them to potential sexual abuse.

Illiterate and uneducated adult women are vulnerable to exploitation, and they often are excluded from basic citizenship rights.

According to Inter Press Service, “On a global scale, women cultivate more than half of all the food that is grown. In sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean, they produce up to 80 percent of basic foodstuffs. In Asia, they account for around 50 percent of food production. In Latin America, they are mainly engaged in subsistence farming, horticulture, poultry and raising small livestock.” Yet women often get little recognition for that. In fact, many go unpaid. It is very difficult for these women to get the financial resources required to buy equipment etc, as many societies still do not accept, or realize, that there is a change in the “traditional” roles. [2]

Educational, cultural, and legal discrimination excludes women from many professions. At home and in the workplace women experience violence and economic and sexual exploitation. When they work outside the home at paid jobs, they earn far less than men and are likely to work in vulnerable, precarious jobs with little security or benefits. In addition, women still perform most of the household tasks.

Growing income inequality forces millions of women to migrate to urban areas in their home countries or overseas in search of work. Women now make up the majority of the world’s migrant labor force. As nannies and maids they care for the young, sick and elderly of the well-to-do while abandoning their own families. [3]

Women own fewer assets than men. Lower salaries and less control over family income limit women’s ability to accumulate capital. Property and inheritance laws often prohibit women from owning property and leave women and children at greater risk of poverty.

The land rights of women are violated on a massive scale worldwide, but with particular ferocity in Africa, where the death of a husband, often from AIDS, leaves widows unable to care for themselves or their children when their property is seized by the husband's male relatives. Some countries in sub-Saharan Africa are in the process of amending inheritance laws because over 30% of households are now headed by women as a result of the AIDS crisis.

Girls account for 55 per cent of the out-of-school population.[1]

Two thirds of the 960 million adults in the world who cannot read are women. [4]

With notable exceptions, such as Rwanda and the Nordic countries, women are conspicuously absent from parliaments, making up, on average, only 16 per cent of parliamentarians worldwide. [4]

Everywhere, women typically earn less than men, both because they are concentrated in low-paying jobs and because they are paid less for the same work. [4]

Of the world’s one billion poorest people, three fifths are women and girls. [4]

“Women do two thirds of the world's work. Yet they earn only one tenth of the world's income and own less than one percent of the world's property. They are among the poorest of the world's poor.” [5]

Two-thirds of women in developing countries do work such as tending crops and  livestock, caring for large families and performing unpaid household tasks. [6]

It is estimated that there are 24.5 million IDP's [internally displaced persons] around the world, and it's thought that between 70 and 80% of them are women and children. [9]