Promoting Gender Equality

Gender equality is the removal of deep-seated barriers to equality of opportunity and outcome, such as discriminatory laws, customs, practices and institutional processes. It also entails concern with the development of the freedoms of all individuals, irrespective of gender; to choose outcomes they have reason to value. It is integral to ideas of educational quality, as an education system would lack key dimensions of quality if it was discriminatory or did not develop capabilities in children to work for an education that was personally and socially worthwhile. Some aspects of this are the freedom to enter school, to learn and participate there in safety and security, to develop identities that tolerate others, to promote health and to enjoy economic, political and cultural opportunities. Gender equality in the classroom therefore is a key to connecting schooling and citizenship with human rights and underpins values of care and respect for children and their teachers. Gender equality is an important and ambitious aspiration for countries and education systems, and is linked to the achievement of gender equality in the everyday lives of individuals and groups. Over the last one hundred years there have been huge steps forward towards realising gender equality in education, but there is also considerable difference within the world on these issues and much work still to be done.

There is general agreement that attainment of gender equality requires a multi-faceted approach, there is no single panacea. The following strategies can be employed;

1. Supporting and training teachers for gender equality
Very little work has been done in teacher training courses to help develop teachers’ understanding of gender inequalities and how to overcome them in the classroom. To address the issues of both teachers’ professional and personal orientation, opportunities are needed for student teachers and teachers in-service – who may have had only very limited or no pre-service