A Scorecard on gender equality and girls ... - unesdoc - Unesco

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Virtually no secondary NERs were collected for girls in the 1990s. As Appendix 2 shows, we have largely had to use secondary GERs in this field of measurement. While we were initially concerned that this would artificially inflate country scores (the 2000 <strong>Scorecard</strong> used secondary NER), most countries - with the exception of the former Soviet Central Asian republics - had secondary GERs that did not look hugely inflated compared with the NERs recorded a decade later. Once again, in order to have proxy data, these measures were used; however, those considered particularly unsafe are highlighted in the appendix (see Appendix 2, Tables A and B). As noted above, those less reliable figures are largely for the former Soviet states. For these countries, namely Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, no primary or secondary sources we consulted had sex-disaggregated regional figures for these areas in the 1990s (although measures have been collected for 2000). We had to decide whether to omit these countries from the comparative 1990 Table altogether, or seek some proxy measure for 1990. We were interested to see what results would be achieved if the figure for the USSR was utilized in the areas of measurement for which there was no regional measure (primary and secondary NER and primary retention). These figures, themselves, were not easy to obtain, but the results have been presented in Appendix 2. Indeed, the problems of aggregation are enormously distorting for these countries, much more so than in India, where the national figure has been arrived at through an open process of data collection. Therefore, the 1990 scores for these countries are considered unsafe. While they are included to provide as full a data set as possible, any interpretations based on these figures need to be formulated with caution. 4 A <strong>Scorecard</strong> on Gender Equality and Girls’ Education in Asia 1990–2000
The 1990 and 2000 <strong>Scorecard</strong>s Table 1 reflects gender equality in school figures for Asia during 2000. Table 1 Gender Equality and Education <strong>Scorecard</strong> 2000 Gender equality and education score % Japan, Korea, Singapore 100 1 Armenia, Fiji, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Sri Lanka 94 2 Kazakhstan 91 3 China 89 4 Georgia 88 5 Thailand 86 6 Maldives 85 7 Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Viet Nam 84 8 Mongolia, Uzbekistan 81 9 Indonesia 76 10 Philippines 68 11 Bangladesh 48 12 India 41 13 Cambodia, Nepal 36 14 Myanmar 34 15 Lao PDR 26 16 Pakistan 20 17 Afghanistan, Bhutan, Brunei, Turkmenistan Source: Derived from Appendix 1. INCOMPLETE DATA Rank A number of interesting issues arise from the 2000 <strong>Scorecard</strong>. Firstly, the table divides into two very distinct halves. There is a large group of high scoring countries, predominantly in South-East Asia and Central Asia, but it is notable that Sri Lanka, China, Viet Nam and the Maldives - which are not high-income countries - are in this group. There is also a large group of low scoring countries, including the very populous India and Bangladesh. There is a big gap between the lowest ranking ‘high scorer’ Philippines (68%) and the highest ranking ‘low scorer’ Bangladesh (48%). This outcome is quite different to that found in Africa, for example, where there are a large number of low scoring countries, but no apparent regional disjuncture (Unterhalter et al, 2004). Secondly, while it is no surprise that countries such as Japan, Korea and Singapore, which have a high GDP per capita, come at the scorecard’s top end, it is notable that countries with relatively low GDP per capita, such as Sri Lanka and China, also score so highly. This result seems to highlight the achievements of policies on gender equality in access to education, health and, to some extent, employment over many decades, regardless of levels of income and wealth in the country. Indeed, the example of Sri Lanka bears this out: It is on a par with the much richer Malaysia, and has a far higher score than Thailand. This high score has been achieved despite many decades of war, underlining observations that, despite the war, aspirations for education are widespread (Little, 1998). A <strong>Scorecard</strong> on Gender Equality and Girls’ Education in Asia 1990–2000 5
Page 2 and 3: United Nations Educational, Scienti
Page 4 and 5: Table of Contents A Scoreca
Page 6 and 7: It is in this spirit that the score
Page 10 and 11: Thirdly, countries which have or ha
Page 12 and 13: Table 3 presents details of countri
Page 14 and 15: Appendix 1 Calculating the Girls’
Page 16 and 17: ++ The girls’ primary NER for 200
Page 18 and 19: Philippines 4 2 4 4 Rep. of Korea 5
Page 20 and 21: Table F: 2000 Scorecard</st
Page 22 and 23: Appendix 2 Calculating the Girls’
Page 24 and 25: Table B: Raw country scores in 4 ar
Page 26 and 27: Table D: 1990 Scorecard</st
Page 28 and 29: References Aikman, S., Challender,
Page 30: UNESCO. (1996) World Education Repo

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