Vol. 4: Female Education During COVID
In the past two decades, we have made great strides in female education across South Asia. This pandemic could negate many of these hard-won gains.
For our fourth issue, we touch upon the news in South Asia, look at the impact of COVID-19 on female education, the rise in child marriages, and the digital gender divide. Lastly, this issue highlights the women from South Asia on the BBC’s list of 100 inspiring and influential women of 2020.
Best,
Bansari Kamdar
News from South Asia
Female suicides in India due to inaccessibility of education: Young women are facing the brunt of school shutdowns due to COVID-19 in India. Female students like the 14-year Dalit girl Devika Balakrishnan from Kerala in June and the 19-year old college student Aishwarya Reddy are committing suicide after being unable to access remote classes or fund further education. According to a 2018 study in Lancet Public Health, over a third of female suicides in the world are committed by Indian women, despite comprising less than 18 percent of the world’s female population. Rakhi Dandona, professor of global health at the Public Health Foundation of India, hypothesizes that “the situation may be related to a clash between women’s aspirations and the rigidity of their social environment.”
Bhutan’s first female minister, Dorji Choden, opens up about women and politics in Bhutan:
The Nepal government issues an ordinance with the provision of imposing a jail term of up to three years and a fine up to Rs 30,000 on people guilty of forcing reconciliation between rape victims and perpetrators. Moreover, if court officials or any other public servants are found guilty, they will be sent to six additional months in jail.
Millions of farmers are protesting the latest farm laws in India. The Farm Bills could disproportionately affect female farmers who are usually invisible in the agriculture sector, according to BehanBox. In India, 73.2 percent of rural women are engaged in agriculture and this legislation may adversely affect landless farmers or farmers with small and marginal holdings, often more likely to be women.
Bhutan’s Queen Mother Gyalyum Sangay Choden Wangchuck has been awarded the United Nations Population Award in the individual category for her work on sexual health and ending gender violence, alongside the non-profit Helpage from India as the institutional laureate. A 2017 study by Bhutan’s National Commission for Women and Children found that 14 percent of women surveyed had suffered physical violence and 4.5 percent suffered sexual violence that year - over 72 percent never sought help. Her Majesty has been instrumental in opening up space to discuss sexual reproductive health and gender-based violence in the kingdom, including opening Bhutan’s first shelter for GBV victims, through “Respect, Educate, Nurture and Empower Women” (RENEW), a nonprofit she founded in 2004.
Deep Dive: COVID-19 and Female Education
Women across the world, particularly South Asia, have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic from health and employment to increased violence against women and reduced access to education.
As schools closed down due to the pandemic at least a third of the world’s schoolchildren – 463 million children globally – were unable to access remote learning, according to a UNICEF report. In South Asia, they estimate that 38 percent of the schoolchildren were unable to access remote learning, affecting adolescent girls disproportionately.
UNESCO estimates that 30 million children may never return to school. Even before the pandemic, 95 million school-age children out of school in South Asia. This is an education emergency - and it is gendered.
Girls are increasingly at risk of being forced out of school and into child marriage, child labor, sexual exploitation, teenage pregnancy, and poverty.
Historically, as economies falter, female education is often one of the first cutbacks by poor families. Research from 2014-2016 on the Ebola outbreak in West Africa shows how the loss of family income led to girls quitting schools in large numbers to perform care work or join the workforce as families lose income. Many have not returned to school.
One report has estimated that nearly 20 million secondary school girls could drop out of school. A survey of 24,000 girls by the literacy charity Room to Read of eight countries - including India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka - found that half the girls were at high risk of their education ending permanently because of school closures. About 7 percent also said that they already thought they would not be returning to school. This could have a long-term impact on countries like Nepal where 40 percent of the population is below the age of 18.
In Afghanistan, even before the pandemic, Ezzatullah Mehrdad finds that over 5 million of the 12 million school-aged children were already out of school, 1500 schools remain closed, 6000 schools have no buildings at all, and 75 percent of the students face a shortage of textbooks. Further, an estimated 60 percent of schools in Afghanistan lack toilets - a major consideration for female education. This education crisis may be further exacerbated as COVID-19 ravages the nation already torn by two decades of war, all the while women’s right to education remains on the bargaining table at the negotiations with the Taliban.
Bangladesh achieved near gender parity in primary and secondary education through various measures like tuition-free education and stipends for girls. However, girls already have higher rates of dropout and grade repetition than boys, attributed to factors like child marriage and early pregnancy - issues greatly exacerbated by school closures.
Child Marriage and Education
Nearly 12 million school-age girls are forcibly married off each year. Even before the pandemic, South Asia had the highest prevalence of child marriages. Almost half (44 percent) of the 650 million women and girls in the world who were married before their 18th birthday were from South Asia. For many South Asian girls being in school was their best defense against child marriage.
Last year, the UNICEF reported that a girl’s risk of marrying in childhood in South Asia has declined by more than a third, from nearly 50 percent a decade ago to 30 percent today. Some reasons for this decline include increasing rates of girls’ education, proactive government investments in adolescent girls and strong public messaging around the illegality of child marriage and the harm it causes.
However, there is already a growing body of evidence that the region stands to lose many of the gains on this front.
In Bangladesh, UN Women finds that strategies to combat child marriage like adolescent girls’ empowerment, community mobilization to change social norms, secondary education, employability, water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure in schools, adolescent-friendly health services, and nutrition have been disrupted by the pandemic and school closures.
Bangladesh has one of the highest adolescent girls’ childbirth rate in the region at 83 percent. Adolescent pregnancies and childbirth have long-term negative health effects on young girls and their newborn children. Child brides are also more vulnerable to intimate partner violence - 43 percent of married girls between the age of 15-19 years are victims of physical or sexual violence during their lifetime.
Nutrition and Health
Women and girls often eat less and last due to harmful social and gender norms in many South Asian households. Rising food insecurity due to the economic downfall will greatly affect young women further impacting their ability to learn.
The closure of schools may also severely affect the nutrition of adolescent girls in the region. Before the pandemic, under the government's mid-day meal schemes in countries like India, students from lower-income families would get one meal at their school for free. By decreasing the financial barriers to primary school education, these programs were instrumental in improving enrollment. But with schools closed, the meals have stopped and parents are scrambling to feed their kids.
The situation will worsen for girls as they are more dependent on the mid-day meal programs given the gendered nature of nutrition provision in households with limited resources. Despite the Supreme Court’s orders to Indian states to continue the program during the lockdown, few seem to have implemented it, irrevocably affecting women’s health now and in the future as they drop out. According to one estimate, 42 percent of adolescent girls aged 15-19 years are undernourished and 54 percent are anemic in India.
School closures will also have a huge impact on period poverty as schools are often places for girls to access sanitary products and learn about menstruation. With the discontinuation of subsidized schemes, such as the free distribution of sanitary napkins in schools, menstrual products may become unaffordable, a situation worsened by the financial stress of the pandemic.
One survey finds that 60 percent of parents refuse to send their girls to school while they are menstruating. A study on cervical cancer risk factors in India also found a direct link between the use of cloth during menstruation and the development of cervical cancer - the second-most common type of cancer among Sri Lankan women today.
One study finds that 66 percent of girls in South Asia do not know anything about menstruation before their first periods. Schools are often touchpoints for girls to learn about periods and address stigmas and taboos associated with it. Lack of access to menstrual hygiene products reduces women’s mobility and participation in society and has a direct link with self-perception and mental health.
The Household and Unpaid Work Burden
Women, including young girls, continue to bear the burden of unpaid domestic work and care work in the household - a trend intensified as girls are pushed to stay home and the rise of elder and childcare. Even when schools reopen, girls will struggle to balance schoolwork and increased domestic responsibilities.
For many young girls, schools were also a refuge from gender-based violence at home. Calls to child helplines during the lockdown have skyrocketed as violence increases in the home. All the while, children no longer have access to teachers, social workers, and such to report incidents at home. Further, as the death toll from COVID-19 rapidly increases, a great number of children will be orphaned and vulnerable to exploitation.
Girls and women seem to be fighting a triple pandemic: one that is restricting everyone from leaving the house; two, that is restricting their access to education and a brighter future; and three, pushing them into forced child marriages and cycles of violence. Governments must prioritize keeping girls in schools and seize this opportunity to build a more equitable education model.
Policy: Remote Learning & Digital Gender Divide
As countries around the world adopt digital learning, South Asia faces unique additional challenges. Only 33 percent of the people in the region have access to the internet and access to both radio and television remains limited in many parts.
A recent UNICEF study into remote learning found that at least 2 in five children - 147 million - in South Asia did not have the tools to access remote learning at home. In Nepal, only 25 percent of children used distance learning platforms, and only 5 percent of children in the poorest households had access to and use distance learning.
Some countries in the region like the Maldives seemed better poised for the move online. The Maldives had already stepped up its online education with every student at government schools receiving a tablet from the Ministry of Education in 2018. However, despite over 80 percent of students having a tablet at home and an estimated 72 percent of public-school students reportedly having access to broadband internet, there was a huge divide in online learning which was provided to children in private schools but not disseminated the same way in public schools. Teleclasses launched by the Education Ministery were also discontinued after a few weeks.
Digital learning in many countries has only exacerbated and entrenched preexisting inequalities and learning gaps.
In a patriarchal society, the preference to access resources, knowledge, and technology is given to boys. The lack of equitable digital infrastructure in the absence of physical classrooms is a huge concern for girls as they struggle to access remote learning. Every seventh girl globally has been unable to access remote learning.
A recent report on India by Neha Ghatak, Achala S Yareseeme, and Jyotsna Jha finds that phones were owned by male family members in 71 percent of cases. One study found that 4 in five (80 percent) girls in India have never accessed the Internet, and more than three in five (62 percent) have never used a computer.
Intersections with poverty and location further worsened their position. As India went into lockdown, a 14-year-old Dalit girl in Kerala committed suicide after being unable to access online classes as her father, a daily-wage laborer, could not afford to buy a cellphone.
Social norms further restrict their access. Girls in Pakistan were almost 40 percent more likely than boys to say that they never had access to a mobile device and the most frequently cited reason for not being able to access a phone was being afraid to ask.
Bangladesh also actively pushed for the digitization of education by implementing virtual classrooms for universities and over 35,000 multimedia classrooms for primary and secondary students. Realizing the limits to internet access across the nation, they also introduced a TV-based learning model broadcasting pre-recorded lessons for those without internet access.
However, many female students remained out of reach because they either did not have a television at home or due to their increased engagement in household chores. In India’s case, the Malala Fund found that merely having a device like television at home did not ensure access. Only 11 percent of children reporting viewing/listening to the educational broadcast on TV or radio.
Among poorer households, children may also find it harder to get help if parents are illiterate or did not complete their own education when learning remotely. Further, the use of online learning could increase children’s risk of exposure to inappropriate content and online predators.
The digital gender divide also affects women’s access to resources. For instance, in the case of Pakistan, the government rolled out a cash transfer program to tackle the economic hardship brought on by the pandemic that largely relies on mobile phone registrations and requires a national ID to register. Shelby Bourgault and Megan O’Donnell estimate that up to 78 percent of women in poverty will be excluded as direct recipients of Ehsaas Emergency Cash payments due to the large gender gaps in mobile phone ownership and national ID possession
Access to remote learning is unequal and urgent education reform requires a mix of television, radio, SMS, and printed materials to ensure that children without electricity, internet, and communication devices are not left behind.
Postcards of Courage
For this issue, we wanted to talk about not just one phenomenal leader but the countless inspiring women across South Asia who have been featured in BBC’s list of 100 most influential women for 2020.
Somaya Faruqi (Afghanistan)
When Afghanistan’s first case of Covid-19 was reported in her home province of Herat, Somaya and her all-female robotics team set to work on a low-cost ventilator to treat coronavirus patients.
Laleh Osmany (Afghanistan)
Laleh Osmany started the WhereIsMyName campaign which forced the Afghan government to allow Afghan mothers to have their names printed on their children's national identity cards.
Rine Akter (Bangladesh)
Rina Akter and her team of helpers have served around 400 meals a week to sex workers in Dhaka who have found themselves without clients, and are struggling to feed themselves.
Rima Sultana Rimu (Bangladesh)
Rima Sultana Rimu is a member of Young Women Leaders for Peace in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, which aims to empower young women from conflict-affected countries to be leaders and agents of peace.
Bilkis Bano (India)
At 82, Bilkis was part of a group of women who peacefully protested against India’s controversial citizenship law. She became the face of a long-running protest at the capital's Shaheen Bagh.
Ridhima Pandey (India)
Ridhima Pandey is a climate activist who, at the age of 9, filed a petition against the government of India in response to its inaction to mitigate climate change
Isaivani (India)
Isaivani is a distinctive gaana singer in India who has spent years singing and performing in this male-dominated space.
Mansi Joshi (India)
Manasi, an Indian para-athlete, is the current para-badminton world champion and was recently listed as a "Next Generation Leader" by Time magazine.
Sapana Roka Magar (Nepal)
Sapana’s organization retrieves abandoned and unclaimed bodies from the street or mortuaries and arranges for them to be taken to hospital for post-mortem examinations and to gives them last rites if they remain unclaimed.
Mahira Khan (Pakistan)
Mahira, an actress, is a national goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, raising awareness of the plight of Afghan refugees in Pakistan
Sania Nishtar (Pakistan)
Dr. Sania Nishtar, a leader in global health and sustainable development, has been spearheading the transformative Ehsaas Poverty Alleviation program, which has improved the livelihoods of millions of Pakistanis by providing mobile banking and savings accounts, and other basic resources.
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Bansari Kamdar is an independent journalist and researcher at the Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy. She is pursuing a post-graduate degree in Applied Economics and has a Master’s degree from Boston University in International Relations and International Journalism. Kamdar reports on gender, immigration, security, and political economy in South Asia. Her work has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Diplomat, Huffington Post, CNN-News18, and more.
Anushka Sharma is a research assistant for the Newspaperwali and is pursuing her Bachelor’s in Communications and Journalism from Bennett University. Sharma believes in experiential learning and is interested in public policy and development.