Mainstreaming responses to the girl child in agriculture - Food ...

or religious) (UCW, 2008). The school calendar may be incompatible with agricultural
work scheduling for boys and girls. If children are attempting to combine school
attendance with excessively long and heavy agricultural work, and for girls domestic
responsibilities (including cooking, washing, fetching firewood and water, and
childcare), their schooling will be interfered with, or they leave school prematurely.
Educating girls has enormous repercussions for future prosperity of families and
societies. Empirical evidence from a range of countries has shown that educating girls is
one of the most effective ways of fighting poverty 9 . However, globally 55% of the
children currently denied an education are girls (ILO, 2006b). Parents may invest more
in their sons’ education than their daughters’. In many cultures, boys are valued more
than girls, and girls are socialized to accept a lower status. A lower social status can lead
girls to have lower self-esteem and fewer opportunities. Leaving school prematurely
impairs girls’ future job opportunities and long-term livelihood prospects. This in turn
perpetuates the cycle of poverty and exploitation from one generation of women to the
next. One of the objectives of the International Partnership for Cooperation on Child
Labour in Agriculture is to overcome the gender gap in rural education.
Econometric studies on child labour datasets increasingly also factor in gender as
a variable, which facilitates an analysis of the effects of the sexual division of labour in
society and the different roles assigned to women and men. For example, while a sexdisaggregated
study in Bosnia and Herzegovina confirmed that education is crucial for
the transition from unemployment to employment for both young women and men
(Gurbuzer & Koseleci 2008), the results also indicate that education is more critical for
young women than for young men. Society’s ability to accept new economic roles for
older girls, and the economy’s ability to create the jobs to accommodate older girls are
key however. A study in Pakistan found that education promotes entry into the more
highly remunerated occupations for men. For women, however, it did so only beyond
10 years education. Indeed, the earnings increments from an extra year of education are
substantially greater for women than men in all occupations except agriculture (World
Bank, 2008). This may indicate that the employment prospects of women are more
sensitive to education, but wages in agriculture do not increase substantially.
A range of country specific studies have shed light on how gender related factors
affect educational attainment levels 10 . In Turkey, the factors that affect the demand for
education from both boys and girls were studied (Goksel, 2008). Household income
growth, improvement in parents’ education and fertility control contributed positively to
school attainment for all children, and the positive effect was higher for girls than it was
for boys. A change in legislation which raised the minimum years of compulsory
education for all children from a 5 to 8 year duration also acted as a catalyst for improved
education for both boys and girls.
In summary, studies are also underway to shed light on the household decision
making processes regarding sending children to work or school. Such studies are
providing indications that birth order and sex can be critical factors regarding the
likelihood that a child receives access to education (Hirata 2008).
U. Murray, P. Hurst - Draft for discussion - 6