- The world is fighting hard to defeat the COVID19 virus which has taken hundreds of thousands of lives worldwide. Considering the disease as a serious threat to human beings, all sorts of usual economic activities have been shut down and learning environment for school children also been suspended indefinitely.
As for the report by UNESCO, 320 Million children enrolled in the school (pre-primary to tertiary) have been suspended from the formal educational learning environment. And out of it, about 158 Million students are females. The most remarkable concern is about female education in the near future, as they seem to have enormous challenges in terms of learning at home due to the economic crisis during this pandemic. In fact, the most affected victims would be those underprivileged communities.
Girl’s education is at high risk:
Looking at the facts about girl’s educational status in most of the underprivileged communities, the high risks of being unable to attend the schools and low academic performances are inevitable in post COVID19. Because the academic performances of female and male in India are already unequal based on socio-economical factors (This is not a discussion of IQ). The drastic economical devastation might compel the millions of female students to engage at different paid and unpaid works and vacate from the learning environment.
Paid works: In case of the suspension of normal activities, as usual, the family income also has been collapsed. The only concern is about how people can feed their hungry stomach and this situation led millions of underprivileged people to take an alternative way. It is high chances that parents might push their children to work for money in the neighbour house for different activities such as baby caretaker, kitchen helper, cowboy etc. This might not happen in most of the economically well-off families but, is usual in marginalized families during the times of desperate.
Unpaid works: Since gender bias is so high in the country like India, different types of works are categorized based on gender. Most usual domestic works such as baby care, cleaning, cooking, etc are assigned only for females that make them busy with the domestic activities. Another impact of gender bias is that parents prefer boys first for schooling than females.
Inequality in terms of education for both male and female always caused by the constant irrational gender biases and the socio-economic factors. Most of the illiterate underprivileged communities have not been rescued from the irrational mental perception which might be due to the lack of social awareness on gender and adult education in remote areas.
At the meantime, drastic economic devastation is prevailing in millions of families. So, having this couple of collated issues of irrational gender bias and socio-economic devastation, the female education in the near future seems to be at high risk of drop-out.
Reflection is contributed by:
Satyasing Mushahary
Senior Consultant at Clf India.1
Alumni of Azim Premji University (2014-16)
