The Educational Status of Women in Nepal

Abstract

Men and women are two parts of a coin, two wheels of a cart but there is vast gender discrimination in accessing each level of education in Nepal. Most of the rural women are illiterate in Nepal and their participation is very low in every sector of development activities. This study analyses the educational status of women in Nepal. The objectives of this study are (a) to review the government's objectives, policy and programmes to wards women’s education. (b) to examine and compare the regional variation of education attainment in terms of gender disparity. (c) to find the temporal variation of literaterate and educational attainment at different levels in each region of the country. Education is the most important means of empowering women with the knowledge,skills and self confidence necessary to participate fully in the development process.The major challenges of this sector are related to incapability in increasing the rate of literacy especially among the women and the access of basic education effectively among poor people and under developed places. The study is mainly based on the secondary sources. The main techniques which are utilized to analyze data are: literacy rate, percentage of literate girls, GER, NER, promotion rate, drop out rate etc. The literacy rate of Nepal is 53.8 percent while only 42.8 percent female are literatecompared to 65.5 percent of males. Eastern Development Region has the highest(29.2%) female literacy rate and Far Western Development Region has the lowest literacy rate (13.3%) in 1991. The over all female literacy rate was 25 % at that time.But in 2001, western development region has the highest literacy rate (49.3%) and far western development region has the lowest literacy rate (33.2%). The hill region has the highest (58.6%) literacy rate followed by Terai region (51.3%) in 2001. there are about 24% female teachers among the 165552 teachers in 2003. The study shows that the educational status of women is very low than men in Nepal.This discrimination to access education should be abolished through making free and V compulsory education till secondary level and furthermore, scholarship and financial support for female students, eliminate gender discrimination in all educational institutions, number of schools should be increased in rural areas. The educational status of female should be raised with proper policies and programmes.