Discussing Gender, Education and India’s Challenges

February 17, 2017

‘Mulgi shikli, pragati jhali,’ was a phrase that echoed through the Transforming India 2030: Strategies for Sustainable Development Goals conference as a panel discussed how education and gender are closely linked. The conference was chaired by Derk Segaar, Director, United Nations Information Centre for India and Bhutan, Dr Rohini Sahni, Professor, Department of Economics, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Dr Anagha Tambe, Head of Department, Krantijyoti Savitribai Women’s Studies Department and Tushar Jha, a Teach for India fellow along with a student and parent.

The conference centered around India, its dynamics and the challenges that lie in achieving quality education for all and gender equality. “There are many issues that the country faces when it comes to higher education. 80 per cent of all engineering graduates in India are unemployable. This means that they do not have the technical or soft skills that could get them hired. We need to ensure that education is meaningful. We must provide answers to difficult questions,” said Segaar as he opened the session.

This was followed by a presentation by Dr Sahni on ‘Girls Higher Education in India with the Question of Inclusiveness’. Her presentation made startling revelations through data analysis, “Education of girls depends upon two factors, one is social reforms that make a girl’s education acceptable and second, greater institutional presence. Between 1958 to 1959, 15 to 20 per cent of the national pool for higher education of girls was concentrated in Maharashtra and West Bengal. This is because most number of social reformers were based in these particular states. However, today in these two states, the number of women studying in higher education has dipped because of the lack of institutional expansion. Most institutes which teach engineering and medicine are based in the southern states. 63.9 per cent of female doctors are from the southern states. Unfortunately, a girl’s higher education isn’t looked at as an investment.”

Dr Tambe presented a talk about intersection of gender with other discriminatory factors like caste and religion. She points out the paradox in the states of Punjab and Haryana as these two states have the poorest sex ratio as well as high female foeticide rates, turns out that it is in these two states that there are more number of women in higher education.

Voicing their concerns over infrastructure in government-run schools in Pune, Teach for India fellow, Tushar Jha expressed that a school is the basic unit of change, “A school is like a nucleus. It has taken me sometime to realise that this, along with the fact that it takes a community to bring up a child. This really will help us achieve a crucial part of the sustainable development goals.”