Rethinking Schooling for the 21st Century

Figure 2.5 The prevalence of the concept ‘gender equality’
Countries that accord high weightage to ‘gender equality’ are concentrated in
South Asia.
A paucity or absence of references to ‘gender equality’ in education policy and
curriculum is observed both in some countries which rate very high as well as in
others that score very low in the Gender Development Index.
Gender Development Index (GDI) (2015) Gender equality (category 5)
Prevalence
Very High High Moderate Low Very Low NA Very High High Moderate Low Absent
Source: UNDP. 2017. Gender Development Index (GDI).
http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/GDI (Accessed 30 September 2017).
particular paucity of references to gender in this region can perhaps be partially
explained as the legacy of egalitarian Soviet ideals of ‘gender-blindness’ (see
Chapter 6).
A paucity or absence of references to ‘gender equality’ is observed both in some
countries which rate very high as well as in others that score very low in the
Gender Development Index. 17 The meaning of the coding results therefore must
be examined on a case-by-case basis — as is attempted in the regionally-focused
chapters in Part II. The anomalous pattern of references to gender illustrates
the problems involved in basing any monitoring efforts simply on counting the
‘presence’ or ‘absence’ of 4.7-related concepts in the official documents.
17 See http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/gender-development-index-gdi.
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Chapter 2: Key Findings and Insights