The Paradox of International Donor Gifts to Improve Gender Equality - Essay Example

The Problems of a Donor-Recipient System Trying to Improve Gender Equality in the Educational Systems of the South Asia. It is, by now, a well documented ( e.g. Nguyen 36 ) axiom, saying that: "The more the social, cultural, moral, behavioural and ethical elements of a Donor society differs from the Recipient one, the probability of unexpected and unwanted results increase." We shall try this axiom on the Indian sub-continent where various European and North American NGOs and other donors have been for decades trying to apply the, so called, Gender Lens theory to improve the educational and health-care equality ( Basu 83 ) between genders of Indian schoolchildren. First of all, let us define the elements of our analysis. The "school-related aid" from the donors, are, for example: desks, calculators, PCs, backpacks, food for school canteens, school-nurses' fees in school primary-health stations, books and other teaching equipment, construction projects for new classroom additions, study centres and tutoring, tutors, translators, etc. These are clear-cut monetary aids that can only improve the situation. The other element is more problematic. The "Gender Lens Tool" can be used to identify gaps in behavioural gender patterns of a society and, hence, to define differences in health information from a gender perspective. Even the non-feminist experts from NGOs of the historically developed countries were influenced by Ms. Black, for Black believes every woman who hopes for a successful, rewarding career needs a mentor ( Black) Consequently, she made the whole white middle class pushing their own priorities regardless. With this background, even if most chiefs and field-workers of the donors' NGOs were women ( while we know that rather the opposite is true ) they would not have much of an idea about the recipient's country history, culture, and built-in society's very different behaviour towards the gender question. Consequently, they would assume that the same social and sociologic environment as in their ( i.e. donor) home countries works in India ( and other Asian countries ) too. Listing a few facts from the recipient country and most likely reaction of donors' staff to them should make the problems facing the Western donors' clear. We start with educational issues first: (1) Scholarly studies and research projects have time and again established that if you educate a boy, you educate a person; if you educate a girl, you educate a "family and a benefit for entire community." Yet girls lag consistently behind boys in access to education throughout India. Reason is simple: girls help their mothers in household chores apart from making carpets. Thus they contribute to their household, and, perhaps, to the whole community economy ( Patel 2008). (2) The next big bias against women-gender at schools starts with textbooks. For example, The Story of Science is a description of man and his discoveries. To show that, with scientific advances, travel time has drastically reduced, the story is told of the 'beautiful young Chinese princess' who was sent by her father to marry the king of Persia but married his son instead because the king died in the two years it took her to reach Persia! The readers are informed that in today's world, she would have reached her destination in two hours. The two scientists mentioned and whose pictures are given are Newton and Marconi ( Bhog 1640). Some textbooks carry the story of Madame Curie, an important role model for girls. Bhog argues that Maria Curie's portrayal is treated through a gender lens as the narrative highlights Maria's domestic responsibilities and emphasizes her ability to successfully take on the burden of home and work. To Bhog, these are narrative devices employed so that women are 'tamed into not being too out of this world, too different, too challenging' ( Bhog 1641). Bhog points out that in her review of 75 lessons in the language textbooks, barely three 'make a genuine attempt to represent women in a different light' ( ibid.). One of the examples is the lesson on Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi whose story provides enormous potential for challenging traditional stereotypes of women. However, Bhog shows that while qualities such as 'courage', 'strength' and 'struggle' are given premium in narratives of 'great men', Laxmibai is depicted as 'a great rider and fighter' but nevertheless 'vulnerable', 'prone to depression' (at the death of her husband and son) and 'doubt' ( Bhog 1638). (3) Parents feel that too much of education can lead to problems in marriage fixing, in finding an eligible spouse with similar education status, and may also lead young girls to speak for themselves, a situation that can give rise to troubles in adjusting to their new homes after marriage ( Bhog 1641). (4) While the 'social classification of attributes and qualities into 'masculine' and 'feminine' are reflected in the realm of culture, the material basis and unequal power that underlie social relations between men and women influence the allocation of resources, roles and entitlements at the level of individual households and thereby influences decision-making in relation to the education of children. Other dimensions of social structure in India such as caste and community status are also constitutive of gender dynamics and influence the nature of participation in educational institutions. Reviewing available data, Mukhopadhyay (108 ) comments that 'even the well-off, education oriented families view educational achievement, especially in scientific fields, differently for girls than boys, and are less inclined to invest family resources in the academic success of daughters than sons. (5) On the one hand an increasing proportion of girls, particularly from lower caste and tribal communities, are being enrolled in government and alternative schools making gender identity a criteria of access to unequal schooling (Ramachandran ). On the other hand, there are also consequences for the self-esteem of girls that Manjrekar ( 4582 ) calls attention to. She says that, 'The dichotomy that has been set up between boys - superior/private, and girls - inferior/government, has its own tragic consequences for the self-esteem and identity of girls.' She speaks of girls 'who, with considerable anguish, question but also resign themselves to this divide which casts them as educationally less deserving than their brothers' ( Manjrekar 4582). Next, we will list some health issues of India's schoolchildren. For easy orientation in the later analysis, we shall continue with numerical classification of the previous paragraph. (6) A girl between her first and fifth birthday in India or Pakistan has a 30-50% higher chance of dying than a boy. This neglect may take the form of poor nutrition, lack of preventive care (specifically immunisation), and delays in seeking health care for disease (Oberman 493). In some parts of the Indian subcontinent the sex ratio has fallen as low as 770 women per 1000 men (Sharma 1553). Gender discrimination at each stage of the female life cycle contributes to this imbalance. Sex selective abortions, neglect of girl children, reproductive mortality, and poor access to health care for girls and women have all been cited as reasons for this difference. (7) Pal (1151) conducted a large-scale study that had several important findings. He found strong correlations between the birth order of a child and its level of nutrition. Later born female children were found to be the most discriminated against within the household, though a similar bias was not found for later born male children. Intervention programs must account for birth order as a factor in future studies to make special provisions for the nutritional needs of later born female children and to educate against such discrimination. However, and most importantly, Pal ( ibid. ) also found that increasing levels of literacy did not automatically alleviate the bias against female children. In fact, he found that at a higher literacy level, discrimination against the female child remained unchanged, or even intensified. Gaps in quality levels of education could be one explanation for this finding, though further analysis of this relationship is essential to determine why/if educational efforts are failing to reduce nutritional biases against female children. Let us now try to examine the above seven points, which, although nowhere near the complete picture, should give us a clear understanding of the paradox that is in the making when Western NGOs were trying to improve the situation via the "gender lens" and their own built-in social, historical, behavioural and cognitive traits. We shall differentiate among: [A] things that donors ( i.e. NGOs etc.) can accomplish, [B] things that they cannot accomplish, and [C] things that will make the recipients ( and donors ) worse off. [A] Assume that point (2) can be sorted out by the governments' decrees, and monetary aid: new books might be printed ( perhaps in the donors' countries ), teachers can be re-trained etc. Besides, textbook biases have been creeping in during the whole history of the Europe and America, inclusive of the recent times ( e.g. creationism vs. Darwinism.) Similarly, in point (1), monetary aid can, if the money can find the way to the individual households which is not very likely in most of the Asian and Central Asian developing countries to certain extend free the girls, in the poorer strata of population, from making carpets and other products of communal existence. This, together with increase of teachers' awareness and professional level at the "government and alternative schools" ( in point 5 ) might, in time, decrease the educational divide and, hence, decrease the "girls anguish of being inferior" ( Manjrekar 4577; in point 5 ) about the feeling of "inequality" with regards the boys. [B] No monetary aid and/or increased educational level of population can alleviate the discrimination against later born female children as opposed to the male children ( Pal 1151 ) in so far the level of nutrition, lack of preventive care and specifically immunization, and delays in seeking health care for disease ( Oberman 493). The reason is in historical behavioural attitude towards the gender. The origin of the Indian idea of appropriate female behavior can be traced to the rules laid down by Manu in 200 B.C. ( Basu 83): "by a young girl, by a young woman, or even by an aged one, nothing must be done independently, even in her own house". "In childhood a female must be subject to her father, in youth to her husband, when her lord is dead to her sons; a woman must never be independent." Thus, Pal ( ibid.) also found that increasing level of literacy has no bearing at all on the bias against the female children. In fact, quite opposite was established: the higher literacy level the more discrimination against female gender has intensified ( Pal ibid.) Try to explain this to the Western-educated NGO's "expert." [C] While the issues mentioned in paragraph [B] underscored the virtual impossibility for donors to make any changes in the behavioural "modus operandi" of the recipient ( Indian ) society, whose basics were laid down in axiomatic form at least a millennium ago or so, there are issues that no donor should try to go into, for there is a risk of alienation of the recipient, with possible spill over to donor's own society. Point (3), for example, claims that parents feel that "too much education can lead to problems in finding an eligible spouse" ( Patel 2008). This is an issue that concerns just about everybody in the given family and, also, in the community, because there is the wellbeing of the future bride-to-be when the very suitable groom-to-be finds the girl sufficiently "educated in family matters" but not outspoken in other matters at stake. In similar situation, if the do-gooders from donors should start trying to "educate" the brides-to-be, the potential grooms, the families and communities, there is a good chance that they would have a full-scale riot on their hands in no time. As a conclusion, a strong warning should be issued to the donors, perhaps along this lines: As even the most avant-garde education systems have their foundations in the traditions of male privilege and perspective; the educational systems of both India and Pakistan are both particularly conservative, post-colonial and patriarchal ( Longve 19). Although there may be some influential women in high positions, the management, administration and policy- and decision-making power in education rests with men (ibid). Which means that it should take several generations to make any substantial changes. It should be quite possible to increase the quality of girls education in governmental schools; the problems in society, briefly discussed in [C], however, are built-in and they are there to stay much longer. Also, any intrusion into the family or society structure and fabric of sociologic web, might back-fire and turn the parts of society against the donors. References Basu, Alaka Malwade, and Kaushik Basu, Women's Economic Roles and Child Survival: The Case of India. Health Transition Review. 1(1991): 83-103. Bhog, Dipta, Gender and Curriculum. Economic and Political Weekly. 37.17 (2002): 1638-1642. Black, Kathie, Basic Black. The Essential Guide for Getting Ahead at Work (and in Life). New York:Amazon Books, 2007. Longwe, S., Education for women's empowerment or schooling for women's subordination. Gender and Development, 6. 2 (1998): 19-26. Manjrekar, Nandini, Contemporary Challenges to Women's Education: towards an elusive goal.Economic and Political Weekly. 38.4 (2003): 4577-4582. Mukhopadhyay, Carol C.. Family Structure and Indian Women's Participation in Science and Engineering. In: Mukhopadhyay, Carol C. and Susan Seymour (ed.). Women, Education, and Family Structure in India. Colorado: Westview Press, 1994: 103-135 Nguyen, Tri Q., Third-World Development. Farleigh Dickinson U. Press,1989: 36 Oberman, M., Mothers who kill: cross-cultural patterns in and perspectives on contemporary maternal filicide. Int J Law Psychiatry. 26 (2003): 493-514. Pal, Sarmistha, An Analysis of Childhood Malnutrition in Rural India: Role of Gender, Income and Other Household Characteristics. World Development. 27.7 (1998): 1151-1170 Patel, Vibhuti, Education through the gender lens. In: Engendering Governance Institutions:State, Market and Civil Society ( ed. Smita Mishra Panda). Sage Publications Pvt. Ltd. 2008: 360. Ramachandran, Vimla, Gender and Social Equity in Primary Education: Hierarchies of Access. New Delhi: The European Commission, 2002. Sharma, D.C., Widespread concern over India's missing girls. Lancet. 362.(2003): 1553. Willinsky, J., Learning to divide the world: Education at empire's end. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. Read More