[nukkad] Status of girls in Pakistan signifies loss of human potential

["kirankumar johare" <>]

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Status of girls in Pakistan signifies loss of human potential


UNI Report,14th June 2001 

A disquieting 45 percent of adolescent girls in Pakistan do not go to school, are not engaged in economically-productive work and are unmarried, indicating a significant loss of human potential, a recent study has shown.

''Schooling, work and marriage are perhaps the most significant activities in which adolescents engage. These activities represent socially recognized statuses that confer access to such social and economic rewards as education, money and stability,'' researcher Valerie Durrant says.

In comparison, only 13 per cent of the boys aged between 10 and 19 years are similarly ‘‘doing nothing’’, she says.

Durrant uses the term ''nothing'' to describe the activities of those not in school, not working for pay and not married. 

''Rather, they are failing to engage in activities that would advance their social position, opportunities, and connection to social institutions outside the household,'' says Durrant in her report ''Adolescent girls and boys in Pakistan: Opportunities and constraints in the transition to adulthood''.

Durrant relied mainly on data from two rounds of the Pakistan Integrated Household Survey, 1991 and 1995-96, to compile information on adolescents' living arrangements, health, education, work, marriage and childbearing.

During her research as Barelson fellow of the New York-based Population Council, a Non-Governmental Organization, Durrant found that although the age of marriage in Pakistan was higher than that in India and Bangladesh, adolescent marriage was common. 

More than half of the women in their 20s were married during adolescence, compared to one-fifth of men. One third of adolescent girls in Pakistan become mothers before 20.

Durrant's research was published in the latest issue of the Council's newsletter, Population Briefs.

She also discovered that improvements in girls' schooling in urban areas have helped reduce the gender gap in education among urban adolescents. However, huge gaps persist between boys' and girls' schooling and literacy throughout rural Pakistan, she says. 

While parents generally favor education for both daughters and sons, the shortage of nearby schools and qualified teachers inhibits girls' schooling, Durrant says.

Most parents, she observes, would prefer that their children attend single-sex schools and, in public schools, girls are taught only by women. Teachers are frequently absent because of the limited mobility allowed for women.

On the educational front, Durrant says there are great disparities between adolescent girls who live in rural areas and those who live in cities. ''This signals a need to direct programmes to rural adolescent girls.''

The rural-urban disparities do not stop at education, she adds. Rural adolescents work more than their urban counterparts. But urban adolescents are more likely to be paid more for their work. 

Adolescent girls in rural areas, in poor households, and with illiterate mothers are more likely than other girls to be doing ''nothing'' and to become wives and mothers in their teens, she says.

Durrant also found that many of the adolescent girls were working in their parental homes, throwing up questions to researchers whether housework prevented girls from engaging in other activities or whether girls performed housework because there were not allowed to do anything else.

Even after accounting for housework performed by adolescent girls, the activities engaged in by ten per cent or more of both adolescent boys and girls are unknown, she says. ''This is a vulnerable group. They are in the home, not linked to any social institutions. They are extremely hard to reach with information and programmes. Finding out what these young people are doing with their time is vital to planning positive and effective policies and programmes for adolescents,'' Durrant adds. 

-UNI

Source-

http://www.indiaexpress.com/news/world/20010614-2.html


KIKU





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