GENDER. LITERACY AND WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT IN INDIA: SOME ISSUES

 

Malini Ghose
NIRANTAR
 

A RESOURCE CENTRE FOR GENDER AND EDUCATION

NEW DELHI

 

 

 

 

Consider these figures:

 

According to the 2001 Census of India:

 

Literacy rates have gone up from 52.1 % in 1991 to 65.4 % in 2001 (for the 7 + age group).

 

Female literacy rates have increased faster (14.9 %) than male literacy (11.9 %) during the past decade.

 

For the first time the absolute numbers of non-literate people have declined from 328 million to 304 million.

 

Between 1991 and 2001 the female literacy rate for Schedule Castes has increased by 18% and 16. 57% for Schedule Tribes.

 

Consider also:

 

The gender gap continues to be more than 20%, with the male literacy rate at 75.26% and female literacy rate at 53.67 %.

 

The literacy rates for Schedule Castes or Dalits (54.69 %) and Tribes (47.10 %) are below the national average and the gender gap is significant at about 24 %.

 

The literacy rate for Muslims at 59.1 % is also below the national average and lowest among all religious communities and with a gender gap of 17.5 %.

 

Nearly 189 million illiterate women constituting 64 % of India’s population still need to be reached.

 

In 42.8 % of the districts in India have a literacy rate lower than 50 % and most of them are concentrated in nine states,

 

The apparent survival rate at the primary level (Grade 5) is 67.15 % and upper primary (Grade 8) is 28.46 %. (Source NIEPA, Elementary Education in India 2004-05)

 

 

The figures show that while progress has been made on a number of fronts with regard to gender and literacy a lot still needs to be done. The challenges lie in reaching a large number of women, especially from socially- economically marginalised groups and in closing the gender gap. 

 

So what are some of the issues that come in way of addressing these challenges -

 

Lack of political will

Unfortunately, in India today there is a lack of political will in actually addressing the challenges of adult women’s literacy. Despite gender sensitive policy documents and the unprecedented mobilisation, of women during the literacy campaigns of the 90s, literacy has all but fallen off the development agenda. Often adult and elementary education are posited as competing constituencies, which is not useful. The needs of adults and young adults for literacy are very different from children and fulfil different goals. Significant efforts in school education notwithstanding, dropout rates continue to be high. Young adults, mostly women are continuously entering the pool of non-literates. Adults need literacy and learning opportunities to access information, to exercise their rights and to make democracy work and several other reasons. The importance of adult women’s literacy in meeting development goals such as improved school participation, maternal mortality rates, nutritional standards etc. is well known. Besides these instrumental benefits the value and importance of women’s literacy as a right in and of itself and in enabling women’s empowerment and gender justice, goals to which the government is also committed, still needs to be urgently established in real terms.

 

Women’s groups have been trying to highlight and bring back the issue of literacy into the agenda of the education sector by intervening in national and international policy level arenas. For example, a people collective of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recently (April 2008) submitted a Report entitled Divided Destinies, Unequal Lives: Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Indian State to the UN Committee on ESCR highlighted the following:

The literacy rate for women shows significant improvement between 1991 and 2001. But despite the gains, disparities in terms of gender, social categories (SCs/STs), rural/urban location, continue to be glaring. The literacy and continuing education programmes that are described in the GOI report are largely on paper. Large-scale relapse into illiteracy is also reported. There is no data on literacy retention rates. It is very likely that India will not be able to meet the Education for All (EFA) and MDGs pertaining to literacy (as pointed out in the UNESCO Global Monitoring Report 2006). The allocation for adult literacy is a mere 0.02% of the education budget. This is the only large-scale non-formal education programme for poor, rural and marginalised women but receives very little priority. The present lacklustre situation means that critical literacy inputs that are required to sustain processes empowerment of women’s collectives, including self-help groups are not being provided thus denying women from marginalised communities access to leadership opportunities and credit. 

 

Government policy documents regularly reaffirm its commitment to adult women’s education but the reality on the ground as well as the resource allocation belies this. What steps are the National Literacy Mission and the State Literacy Missions taking to systematically track women’s retention of literacy? What are the proposed budget allocations for adult literacy and continuing education? Moreover, what substantive plans (backed by programmes and resources) does the Government have for reviving the Continuing Education Programme, such that it takes into cognizance the needs and lived realities of women and in ensuring that it reaches committed Education For All Goals for adult literacy?

While the need for convergence is regularly mentioned in government policy documents this does not get translated at the programme and implementation level. What concrete steps does the Government have to dovetail literacy and capacity building within micro-credit and empowerment programmes? Which Ministry will be responsible and accountable for implanting and monitoring this?

 

Similar concerns were raised in the Shadow Report prepared by women’s organisations and presented to the CEDAW Committee in January 2007. The CEDAW committee took note of some of these issues and made recommendations in its concluding comments as well.

 

…..The Committee calls upon the State party to strengthen its efforts, at the national, state and union territory levels, to close the gap in literacy rates between men and women, establish benchmarks in this regard and create mechanisms to monitor the achievement of such benchmarks. It also urges the State party to provide, in its next periodic report, information on the budgetary allocation to adult education programmes and the impact, and trends over time, of such programmes. Moreover, it calls upon the State party to meet its commitment of allocating 6 per cent of its gross domestic product to education in its eleventh five-year plan. … (From the Concluding Comments CEDAW Committee, point 33) 

 

No connections between literacy and women’s empowerment programmes

 

For example though the need for convergence is mentioned in policy documents there are hardly any connections between different programmes in practice. Take the case of micro credit or self-help group programmes, which is the main intervention to meet the objectives women’s empowerment and poverty alleviation in India today. According to estimates, there are nearly 7 million self-help groups in the country, out of which more than 90% are comprised only of women.

 

A recent survey conducted by Nirantar[1], of 2,750 SHGs formed under both government and NGO programmes across 16 states, threw up some telling data.

 

For example,

61% of SHG members surveyed were non-literate; this included those 28% who could only sign.

 

69% of the women who were in leadership roles were literate, making literacy a critical determinant of which women get to play leadership roles.

 

For 65% groups, it was the literate group leaders who had participated in most of the trainings offered.

 

The group leaders availed of 46% of the large loans, although leaders are only 13% of the total numbers of members in the groups.

 

Out of 45 NGOs who participated in the study only 3 had undertaken concrete efforts to provide literacy skills to SHG members.

 

47% groups formed under government programmes had not received any kind of capacity building input for the last two years. Only 6% groups formed under government programmes had received inputs on gender issues.

 

Looking beyond figures, here is what women members of self-help or micro credit groups had to say about literacy.

When we go to meet forest officers, we are not able to give our demands in writing. We have worked a lot to empower ourselves but still we are dependent on others to write our demands. (SHG member, Gujarat)

                           

We have faith in the accountant and bookkeeper. But if the accountant is doing something incorrect, we can’t say anything. (SHG member, Andhra Pradesh)

                                              

The connections between literacy, transparency, autonomy and self-confidence are evident in these statements. The findings show that literacy enables access to leadership, which in turn leads to access to other opportunities, such as credit and capacity building. It also points out that literacy is a critical ingredient in ensuring and sustaining women’s empowerment. Despite this strong evidence, promoters of such programmes, government and NGOs and donors, are not making the linkages and investing in literacy programmes.

 

If women need literacy they will use it and literacy skills will become sustainable. Besides microcredit groups there is documentation to show that women members of federations and panchayat (institutions of local self governance) members, having moved into the public domain, come forward to demand literacy. But they have specific expectations from literacy programmes. In general, the de-contextualised literacy programmes have proven to be ineffective. Moreover, women are not a homogenous category. The gender disaggregated literacy data shows that the literacy rates is significantly worse for socially and economically disadvantaged groups. There are significant rural, urban and regional differences as well. These distinctions and needs of different groups are not taken care of when planning strategies.

 

Looking at gender beyond access

As participants of most adult literacy programmes are predominantly women, this is often taken to mean that gender concerns are automatically being addressed, which is not the case. Gender is about addressing unequal relations and should inform every aspect –planning, training, evaluation, programme design etc. and not only reaching women.  For example, just building a community learning centre will not ensure that women go there. For a programme to be gender sensitive it is important to take into consideration the social relations within which women’s lives are embedded. For a woman to leave her home and come to a literacy class or the continuing education centre requires negotiations at different levels. Her husband, other family members and sometimes even her children must give her ‘permission’ to attend. She has to convince the community at large that literacy will be beneficial and will not ‘spoil’ her or make her ‘too bold’. She cannot do this alone. Interventions that do not include such support as part of the programme usually do not work. Trust takes a long time to build and most literacy programmes are short-term programmes, and thus not effective. Similarly, training programme with a couple of sessions devoted to gender does not do the job. Despite commitments to gender it continues to be ad hoc and not

 

Sustaining literacy

What do learners read once they complete a literacy programme?

 

The 2006 National Readership Survey in India had this to say:

359 million literate people have nothing to read

Affordability is not the main constraint

81 % rural readers have no access to newspapers.

 

Newly literate people, rural communities, women and other marginalised groups are completely outside the information loop. Several factors limit the access of newly literate readers, to reading material. Villages, where a majority of such readers live usually fall in the media dark regions.  Poor, rural communities are not profitable markets; hence investments in distribution networks are not made. Issues of language and content are also critical in determining readership. Mainstream newspapers and magazines are in the official language and written in a formal style. The content assumes a level of information that readers with low levels of formal education may not have.

 

If mainstream media is inappropriate, specialised publications for newly literates also have limitations. They are didactic, message oriented and invariably represent women and other marginalised communities in negative and stereotypical ways. Material aimed at women tends to be limited to topics like hygiene, nutrition, reproductive health, problems of early marriage etc. While such topics are important the treatment in material does not in fact encourage critical thinking or an analysis of the causes behind why they present situation exists. Moreover, people read not only to get information but for pleasure and entertainment as well. These are invariably lacking in most material developed for newly literates.

 

Not having regular access to reading material has serious consequences. Newly literate populations quickly relapse into illiteracy. It means no access to information, inability to participate in public debates and a lack of awareness of ones rights. In the absence of a literate environment the investments made in making people literate is as good as providing water in leaking glasses.

 

Some Recommendations:

 

Demonstrable political commitment to adult literacy, including significant increase in allocations to meet the vast and diverse needs of adult women’s literacy and long-term learning.

 

Today in India and the region the most important and widespread interventions for women’s empowerment is micro credit or self-help group programmes. To realise the objectives of such programmes substantive literacy and capacity building inputs should be ensured and appropriate programmes developed and all promoters of such programmes across different ministries should be responsible for implementing them. An inter-ministerial monitoring mechanism should be constituted.

 

A mapping of literacy and learning needs different groups of women and development of different issue based contextualised programmes developed. Including the establishment of a flexible and accessible equivalency programme with an established delivery mechanism at district levels.

 

Promotion of the production of a range of reading material by different agencies including supporting efforts for locally developed material. Policy directives and investments to ensure distribution mechanisms.

 

Mechanisms to gather and reliable data on retention, relapse and use of literacy should be put in place. At present the quality of literacy data is unreliable and does not mirror the complex ground level realities. Just knowing whether a woman is literate or not is not useful for planners and programme designers. There is no data on retention and relapse. In the case of elementary education data on retention and dropouts has been crucial in providing direction to realigning and designing policies and programmes.

 

Investing in innovative programmes and approaches and drawing lessons for adaptation and expansion is one of the critical needs and regional sharing. Here too we need to be creative.