Bonaventura Model United Nations
26th, 27th and 28th of September
2014
Research Report
Forum: Special committee
Issue: Providing equal access to education for both genders
Student Officer: Thomas Fassotte
Position: Deputy Chair
All the subsections below must be filled in to adequately inform the delegates.
Introduction
Education is of upmost importance if you want a good job, have understanding of the world around
you or simply understand certain basics that help you to survive. UNICEF states: ‘Universal access to
quality education is not a privilege - it is a basic human right.’
Yet, not in every country education is equally accessible for both genders. The millennium goal
‘Achieve universal primary education’ and ‘promote gender equality and empower women’ both
entail narrowing the gap between education accessibility and literacy rates between men and
women. Even though the millennium goal project and other specific projects like the ‘Education for
All’ have improved the situation, there is still a lot to gain.
When focusing on the Improvement of the equality for both genders in accessibility of education one
should not only focus on girls. There are in fact a lot of countries, especially in Latin America, that
have a much larger proportion of girls in education than boys.
Delegates should besides focusing on eradicating gaps of illiteracy between men and women, also
focus on development of non-discriminatory education, equal access to university education or other
post high-school education programs, vocational training, security of schools and promotion of girls
and women education and boys and men education.
Definition of Key terms
Gender parity: refers to the state in which genders are equally treated. Gender parity in education
means that there is an equal distribution of girls and boys amongst (specific) educational institutions.
For example when gender parity has been achieved for primary education in country X, it means that
in country X there is an equal distribution of boys and girls in primary education. Though this can be
an indicator of equal access to education, gender parity does not necessarily mean that both genders
have equal access.
Literacy-rate: percentage of people that is able to read and write.
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MDG: Millennium Development Goal: refers for the millennium development goals that have been
set by the UN. The goals were set in 2000 and have to be achieved by 2015. The relevant goals for
the topic of equality in education (mainly goal number 2 and goal number 3) are elaborated upon
under ‘Previous attempts to solve the issue’ and ‘the timeline of key events’.
Ratio of girl to boy: in this context it refers to the amount of girls compared to boys in (different
levels) of education. For example a ratio of girls to boys of 0.91 means that there are 0.91 girls for 1
boy. Or rather: 91 girls for every 100 boys.
Primary, secondary and tertiary education: primary education is the first form of education and
often covers elementary school and in some countries also kindergarten. Secondary education is the
education that prepares students for higher education or rather simply said: it is the education you
receive after having had primary school. An example of secondary education is the American highschool. Tertiary education is the education you receive after high-school at college or university level.
Lifelong education: refers to education besides primary, secondary and tertiary education that is
acquired throughout life. For example pre-school, government courses or other education programs.
ODA: Official Development Aid, referring to the loans and donations to developing countries.
Background information
As can be seen on the map below, there are many areas that show an equal amount of girls
compared to girls. Though in sub-sahan Africa, South and Western Asia, girls are severly
disadvantaged. Yet in Latin America especially, boys are greatly disadvantaged.
The problem is often
the result of the
economic situation in
countries and cultural
values that
disadvantage a
specific gender.
In Latin America the
education in general
advantages girls of
boys. The main
reason that keeps
boys out of school is
labour. Especially in
Secondary education,
many boys drop out of school because their labour is needed. A research in Chili has shown that boys
are four times more likely to drop out of school for work due to poverty than girls. Other reasons are
traditional teaching methods that reinforce gender stereotypes. Though girls are sometimes also
denied their right to education in specific indigious groups or areas throughout Latin America.
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In especially sub-Saharan Africa (specifically West and Central Africa) it are the girls that suffer from
great disparity in education. Girls are in many African traditions and beliefs discriminated and many
traditions restrict girls in this region form going to school. For example early mariage and genital
mutilition help conform a submissive role for women in society. Parents often don’t see the need to
educate girl children if they are married early, because they will work for the husbands family
anyway.
Other problems entail the safety. Many parents keep girls home from school because schools or
routes towards school aren’t safe or just simply to long. Bad infrastructure seems to especially hit
girls, seeing they have a dominant role in household jobs such as fetching water. Though there is a
clear difference between Eastern and West Africa, seeing that many countries in Eastern Africa have
gender parity. Yet also in Eastern Asia there is girls have unequal postions in society and education.
In the middle East the main cause of gender disparity conflict, poverty and discrimination. Girls are
often kept home to do household chores and are often forced to work in order to contribute to the
household income. Also in the middle east traditions like early marriage disadvantages girls greatly
and girls are often looked upon as submissive. Other major problems are the unstable armed
conflicts in the region. Armed conflicts keep many children out of school.
Of course demographic developments can also lay at the foundation of gender parity, yet in such a
case you do not speak of unequal access. For example Germany, which has mandatory education for
primary and secondary school and in some cases beyond, still has gender disparity in education.
Many countries have seen great improvement, yet armed conflicts that destroy many schools and
make school attendance dangerous, discrimination towards specific genders, cultural values and
traditions, natural disasters, but especially economic developments remain to be major barriers in
providing gender parity in education and equal access.
Major Parties Involved
All countries in the world are important partners, seeing that even those who have achieved gender
parity supposedly help those countries that have not. It would not be efficient, nor would it be
helpful to simply name all the countries that need major help on gender parity. Instead this list
includes several important bodies that work on achieving the gender parity goal. Of course many
nations contribute to these bodies and many support their initiatives.
UNICEF: UNICEF is an organization that works for the rights of children and that of course includes
the provision of education. UNICEF leads the United Nations Girls Education Initiative (UNGEI) which
is an organization that promotes girls education and it provides technical support to countries on a
national level. For example the GAP project that has been launched by UNGEI is a multimedia project
that assesses data towards the progression of gender parity in education. Then it makes concrete
plans, gives guidance etc. The organization is involved in those countries that need help and it runs
on the money of donors.
UNESCO: This United Nations body leads the ‘Education for All Global Action’ plan which aims to
achieve the six ‘Education for All’ goals. Besides this, UNESCO leads other important programs that
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are directly or indirectly linked to the achievement of gender parity in education. For example the
‘Literacy Initiative for Empowerment’. Which the ‘Education and training of women’ report written
by UN explains as follows: ‘a multi-stakeholder partnership is being set up in 35 countries that
contain 85 per cent of the world’s illiterate population. It will provide technical support at the
country level in the areas of policy, advocacy, partnership building, capacity-building and innovations,
with a particular focus on women, girls, and poor families, particularly in rural areas.’ This is again an
important UN organ that helps in the fight for gender parity in education. In each of their project
many countries are involved and many countries function as a donor.
World Bank: the World Bank coordinates the ‘The Education for All Fast-Track’ initiative, which is a
global partnership of developing countries and donors in order to increase the efforts on the
strengthening of national education policies and on achieving universal primary education.
Timeline of key events
1990: Beijing platform for action: The Beijing Platform for Action set six goals concerning the
improvement of education. It primarily focused on improving the position of women linked to
education. The goals included ensuring equal access to education, eradicate illiteracy of women,
improve the access of women to vocational training and post-high school training, developing nondiscriminatory education and promote lifelong education for girls.
2000: World education forum in Dakar (2000)  reviewed achievements and set new goals with a
time limit. Two of these goals focused on gender equality in education. Goal 2 focusses on providing
access to free, compulsory primary education of a certain quality for children under disadvantaged
circumstances. The latter also meant focusing on disadvantaged girls. Goal 5 focusses on eliminating
gender disparities in secondary and primary education by 2005 and achieving complete gender
equality by 2015, focusing on girls’ full access to high quality basic education.
2000: MDG’s the millennium goals have been set in 2000, with the goal to fight poverty around
the world. MDG 2 and MDG 3 focus on education. Target 2.A. of MDG 2 is specifically relevant and
reads: ‘Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full
course of primary schooling.’ Target 3.A of MDG 3 says: ‘Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere,
boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.’ So the Millennium
Development goals, signed by 189 nations, explicitly state the need to improve access to education,
specifically for girls. The fact that 189 nations agreed to work together on this is a milestone for
improving education access for both genders in an equal manner.
2005: this can be seen as a very important year. In 2005 a new report by the UN (mainly focusing on
the progress on millennium goals) has shown great improvement. The world-wide girls to boys’ ratio
of intake of first-graders had improved from 0.91 to 0.94 and in 118 countries gender parity had
been achieved. Primary education had also improved to a ratio girls to boys of 0.95 and especially the
south and west of Asia had improved significantly form a ratio of 0.83 to a ratio of 0.92. On a worldwide scale, girls from then on had a more dominant position in tertiary education. That too shows
that, even though girls are in most situation worse of then boys, in some cases boys are greatly
disadvantaged too. This is also an important year because it was a date on which many of the Global
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initiatives wanted to have achieved their goals. Including a part of the MDG’s saying that gender
parity must be achieved by 2005. As can be read above, that goal was not met.
2015: In this year the MDG must be achieved and the same goes for the ‘Education for all’ goals. In
theory it is possible that the goals are going to be achieved, but it is very far from the current reality
and very unlikely that that will happen. This means that new goals need to be set and this means that
there should be continued, but rather increased, efforts on improving the gender disparities in
education.
Previous Solutions
Under the heading ‘timeline of key events’ a lot of previous attempts to solve this issue have been
mentioned already. Below I rename all of them again and elaborate where necessary:
Education for all:
This is a still running initiative that has been formed during world forum of Dakar. This program has
set six goals in relation to education. Two of those goals contribute to the aim of gender parity
directly, as mention under the heading ‘Timeline of key events.’ They try to stimulate individual
countries to increase spending on education and fight corruption, seeing the huge costs of
corruption. The Education for all platforms has many donations so they can support developing
governments in developing their education system.
Millennium Development goals:
Development goal 2 aims at universal primary education and MDG 3 aims at equality for women, of
which specifically MDG3.a, which aims at gender parity in education, is especially relevant. They
have promoted education for girls around the world.
Commitments of the above mentioned platforms and other platforms include the important work of
data collection. For example ‘The Literacy Assessment and Monitoring Programme’ (LAMP) aims to
collect data towards literacy rates and furthermore many data has been collected in the context of
MDG progress. This is an important measure because data collection can be used to keep track of
progress, analyze effectiveness of specific policies and built arguments for effective innovations.
There are plenty specific actions taken by these platforms or actions stimulated by these platforms or
other platforms. Many nations have taken measures towards achieving gender parity. Several
specific actions that have been taken are listed below:
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In the Dominican Republic for example there has been promotion of non-sexist language by
education staff and in text books.
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In Benin they eliminated tuition fees for girls in rural areas for primary education
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Egypt’s ministry of Local Development has created vocational training centers that have
succeeded to educate thousands of women
In Benin the government has organized awareness-raising campaigns to encourage parents
to send girls to school
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In Austria has aimed at increasing attendance rates of women for technical university studies
by increasing the amount of female professors.
Possible Solutions
Continue the old efforts:
A to my opinion very good approach to this problem is to continue the old efforts, but with a new
twist to make them relevant to the current statistics and to increase current efforts. There are
several critical areas that lack behind in global averages. Sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania have the
widest gender gaps and secondary education access for girls is still especially critical in South and
West Asia.
Delegates should for example define new global initiatives or global campaigns that promote equal
access to education, for both girls and boys, depending on the country/region. Funding should be
internationally raised in order to build new schools and provide school materials for especially
minorities, as they provide a large proportion of out of school girls.
Though, delegates should also focus on the unequal access for boys to education. Many boys have to
work when they are of a certain age. Solutions could be part-time schools that allow work and school
to be combined and promotion. Yet, it should be kept in mind that boys are often necessary for a
family income and cannot simply be legally forced to go to school.
Most important is that delegates are creative in their approach and closely study initiatives that
already have been taken. They provide plenty of inspiration or provide a basis to further build upon
policies and ideas.
Appendix
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This is a piece of text written by the UN about education and training of women which
provides handy statistics and a useful overview of some UN programs that tried to ensure
more gender equality in education. I specifically recommend reading this document! 
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/beijingat10/B.%20Education%20and%20train
ing%20of%20women%20(Sep%2009).pdf
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001211/121147e.pdf  this is a report of the
Dakar platform. It explains the goals, achievements and strategies of the ‘Education for All’
initiative.
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Bibliography
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This is a piece of text written by the UN about education and training of women which
provides handy statistics and a useful overview of some UN programs that tried to ensure
more gender equality in education. I specifically recommend reading this document! 
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/beijingat10/B.%20Education%20and%20train
ing%20of%20women%20(Sep%2009).pdf
http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/leading-the-internationalagenda/education-for-all/efa-goals/  education for all initiative
http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/2015_MDG_Report/pdf/MDG%202015%20PR%20Key%
20Facts%20Global.pdf  report on achievements concerning the MDG topics
http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/gender.shtml  MDG 2 explained
http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/education.shtml  MDG 3 explained
http://www.ungei.org/gap/reportLatin.html  Latin America, unequal access to education
for boys
http://www.ungei.org/gap/gap.html
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