Educational disparities Indicators of community representation

Position of Women 108 The positive by-product of gender-based barriers to the labour market is that child labour to a lesser extent occurs among girls and less affects their development, for instance in terms of educational deprivation. Among other things, policy could be directed to facilitate women’s employment in the public sector, especially public administration, health and education. One precondition of such policy would be educational adequacy of women. In this development sector large gender gaps persist, especially in rural areas and even more among the Kuchi population. Literacy of women is less than one-third of that of men, which is already extremely low in international perspective. However, comparison of literacy across age groups shows an increase, and even an accelerating increase, of female literacy, which strongly suggest recent improvements of the educational system. This is supported by the increase of girls’ – and overall – enrolment in primary education, compared to the NRVA 2005. Especially in urban areas the NAPWA target of 70 percent enrolment of girls is within reach, and girls are closing the gap with boys. Policy should, however, be primarily directed at the rural areas where the large majority of children live and where girls enrolment is around 38 percent. Besides education of new generations, Afghanistan has an adult population of 9.5 million people who are illiterate – among whom 5.5 million women – who should be provided with an opportunity to learn basic reading and writing skills. Reproductive health has particular importance for women and girls, as a high – but not exactly determined – price is paid for high fertility, closely spaced births, early pregnancies and poor maternal health care in terms of antenatal and delivery care. In addition, the health system provides gender-specific barriers to women because of their restricted mobility and unresponsiveness in the sense of providing female health personnel. Policy measures should consider temporary importation of female health volunteers and intensified campaigns to enroll more women in health professions. The development of paramedics for rural deployment as well as mandatory up-skilling of existing female professionals may also be considered. In addition, from a women’s and a health perspective, accurate information about maternal mortality is urgently needed for policy making and priority setting in the country. Despite the very low levels of maternal health care provision, the NRVA surveys suggest significant improvements in the last few years. Also in terms of age at first marriage – important with respect to pregnancy-related health risks – and spousal age differences – important for, for instance, more gender balance in household decision making – noticeable changes can be observed. Increasingly smaller proportions of girls marry at young 18 and very young 15 ages, and the average age differences between wives and husbands has significantly declined. An issue that is partly related to large spousal age gaps is the large number of widows in the country – over half a million. In the context of Afghanistan, these can be classified as vulnerable, along with 70 thousand female heads of households. Sharp focus on these groups of women and their families is needed in designing and implementing development policies. In terms of population information, any survey and census undertaking should pay particular attention to adequately capture women and girls in the data collection through targeted training and supervision of fieldworkers. The general conclusion should be that huge challenges remain with respect to women’s mobility, participation in public life, decision making, health, and access to economic and educational opportunities. The most urgent needs are found among the rural and Kuchi populations, and in line with that, gender gaps are usually larger among these than in the urban population, with the notable exception of labour force participation and employment. But on the positive side, significant improvements can be achieved in a relatively short time span, as is suggested for the education and health sectors.