Comparison of data for men and women reveals
significant disparity in educational attainment.
By 1992, among people older than fifteen years
of age, 22 percent of women were literate, compared
with 49 percent of men. The comparatively slow
rate of improvement for women is reflected in
the fact that between 1980 and 1989, among women
aged fifteen to twenty-four, 25 percent were literate.
United Nations sources say that in 1990 for every
100 girls of primary school age there were only
thirty in school; among girls of secondary school
age, only thirteen out of 100 were in school;
and among girls of the third level, grades nine
and ten, only 1.5 out of 100 were in school. Slightly
higher estimates by the National Education Council
for 1990 stated that 2.5 percent of students--3
percent of men and 2 percent of women- -between
the ages of seventeen and twenty-one were enrolled
at the degree level. Among all people over twenty-five
in 1992, women averaged a mere 0.7 year of schooling
compared with an average of 2.9 years for men.
The discrepancy between rural and urban areas
is even more marked. In 1981 only 7 percent of
women in rural areas were literate, compared with
35 percent in urban areas. Among men, these rates
were 27 and 57 percent, respectively. Pakistan's
low female literacy rates are particularly confounding
because these rates are analogous to those of
some of the poorest countries in the world.
Pakistan has never had a systematic, nationally
coordinated effort to improve female primary education,
despite its poor standing. It was once assumed
that the reasons behind low female school enrollments
were cultural, but research conducted by the Ministry
for Women's Development and a number of international
donor agencies in the 1980s revealed that danger
to a woman's honor was parents' most crucial concern.
Indeed, reluctance to accept schooling for women
turned to enthusiasm when parents in rural Punjab
and rural Balochistan could be guaranteed their
daughters' safety and, hence, their honor.
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