Education in Emergencies Learning Community: Understanding the challenges to secure women and girls’ education.
On 24 March 2022, GCE hosted an Education in Emergencies learning community session to ‘Understanding the challenges to secure women and girls’ education’ and to engage GCE members, partners and other stakeholders around the multiple forms of exclusion, and discrimination and violence that affect women and girls’ education. The EiE Learning Community shared knowledge and evidence from the Afghan Women Network (AWN), the Civil Society Action Coalition on Education For All (CSACEFA), Nigeria; and the Somali Coalition for Education.
The presentation from Afghanistan explored the challenges for girls' and women's education after the Taliban takeover. In Nigeria, the Nigerian National Policy on Education states that “access to education is a right for all Nigerian children regardless of gender, religion and disability, which is in line with the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Despite this and other policies and programs in place, women and girls are still at a disadvantage, when it comes to accessing Universal Basic Education. This presentation focused on the analysis of the challenges and barriers inhibiting women and girls' access to basic education. It also explored the role that the Civil Society Action Coalition on Education For All (CSACEFA) has played over the years in ensuring these challenges are removed and will suggest possible ways to ensure women and girls have access to education. In Somalia, the presentation by EFASOM explored the fact that literacy rates are among the lowest in the world. Girls’ access to secondary and higher education is especially low and reflects the existence of gender norms that are biased against women. As a result, women’s participation in the labour force is only 19%, which is also amongst the lowest in the world. There are traditional social norms that favour the educational attainment of boys over that of girls. In higher education, women represent only 30 percent of all students enrolled.
