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Prioritising gender equality in education in the midst of crisis

Authors	Type	Stream	Full Paper
Lucy Lake, Laurie Zivetz, Angeline Murimirwa	Open call	Violence	en

Aim:

This presentation will examine the impact of effective partnership and participation in tackling gendered issues of access to education and vulnerability to violence, particularly in a context of crisis.

Overview:

The presentation will highlight the key findings of an extensive survey conducted by Camfed in Zimbabwe in 2009 that examined the impact of political and economic crisis on gender equality in education. It will also make reference to related surveys in Zambia and Tanzania conducted in 2008 in order to demonstrate how this data is now being used by policymakers, as well as in public campaigns to tackle school based gender related violence.

The surveys gathered data from 5,818 community respondents, including parents, teachers, primary and secondary school students, school-leavers and district officials (female and male). The findings provide insight into the complex interplay between poverty, gender and power dynamics mirrored in the way society, the family and girls’ own self image keeps them locked in a cycle that manifests in lower educational completion rates, early pregnancy, and vulnerability to violence.

The design of the study combined PRA techniques with survey data collected with the use of innovative digital technology. Trained enumerators included young rural women who had never before handled technology, and who worked alongside district government officials and civil authorities. This in itself cut through traditional gender and power dynamics and became a journey of empowerment for all those involved.

In Zimbabwe, the survey was conducted in four districts across the country and was complemented by secondary data from school and district education office records.  In addition, the research benefited from a study by the National Education Advisory Board (a body set up in February 2009 to advise the newly-instated Minister of Education), which looked at the situation in schools across the country. The final analysis of this data was completed in February 2010.

In addition, the presentation/contribution will make reference to a 2-year study conducted by Linklaters LLP which assessed the governance mechanisms deployed by Camfed that underpin accountability and child protection in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi.

Limitations:

• The limitation in any survey is the fact that all questions are closed ended. In this case, the issues were explored in more depth through qualitative methods.
• Developing a tool in a participatory way, as was done with the PRA tool, achieves tremendous buy-in, but is, by definition limited to the conceptual abilities of the designers.
• Ideally, more time would have been spent in undertaking the PRA in remote areas, but the volatile context at the time of the survey precluded this. However, the exercise was achieved in four rural districts.

Snapshot of survey findings:

• 39% of parents interviewed said that at least one of their children had dropped out of school over the last 2 years, with a particular spike at the transition to secondary school. Qualitative data indicates that the economic downturn pushed many girls into transactional sex and early marriage. A third of young women interviewed reported that they knew a young woman who had to sell sex to feed her family during the crisis.
• Levels of child abuse during the crisis were high. 62% of all respondents said that they had counselled an abused child within the previous 6 months.
• School based gender related violence remains a key concern across all areas. A significant concern is the extent to which the onus and responsibility is placed on girls. In one survey, more than 40% of students asserted that it is a girl’s fault if she gets pregnant by a teacher, and more than 26% responded that it is ‘ok for a teacher to impregnate a girl as long as he marries her or pays for damages’.
• There was far greater responsiveness in tackling abuse in areas where strong partnerships are in place between local authorities, an NGO (Camfed), school staff and parents. These partnerships have been consolidated through Community Development Committees and School Based Committees. Membership of these structures led to participation and more personal initiative, including in measures to tackle abuse. More than half of respondents reported acting on incidents of child abuse in districts where partnerships are well-established (compared with 18% in other districts).
• These structures serve as a rallying point, and enabled collective action that sustained critical aspects of the social safety net under the direst of circumstances. Where these local partnerships were in place, there was consistently better teacher retention in schools during the crisis compared with other schools in the same districts. Key factors that contributed to the resilience, innovation and responsiveness of partner structures during the crisis included the multi stakeholder nature of their composition which broadened access to a range of resources and perspectives, as well as their grassroots nature, particularly important as confidence in central government waned.