Rural women demand an education for poor Pakistani girls
Girls' education
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Pakistani girls at a school in Rawalpindi, Punjab, which is helped by aid from DFID Picture: Flickr/DFID
For years,Fatima would wake up in the morning and dream of going to school –but her hopes for an education were crushed.
Rather than joining her two brothers in school, from the ageof five Fatima would set off with her mother to work in thefields of their village in Bahawalpur district of Punjab ineast Pakistan.
“I wanted to go to the school and wanted to become ateacher, so that I could help other girls,” Fatima, now agedseven, said in a Skype interview from her home.
The daughter of a labourer, Fatima seemed destined to acycle of illiteracy and poverty and to remain one of more than13 million girls in Pakistan to never see inside a classroom.
Nearly half of Pakistan’s 53 million children aged five to 16 areout of school and 55% of those are girls.
Pakistan has the third largest number of out-of-school girlsin the world, a fact that hit headlines globally in 2012 afterTaliban militants shot 14-year-old schoolgirl and educationadvocate Malala Yousafzai, now a Nobel Peace prize laureate.
Now amid this largely patriarchal society, Pakistani women,be they educated campaigners or illiterate mothers, are at theforefront of advocating for girls’ right to school.
Fatima’s luck changed when local community workers visitedher family and, after several meetings, backed her mother andconvinced her father to send her to the nearby school, breakingthe traditional norm of keeping girls at home.
“My wish came true and I was able to go to school. I like toplay with my friends. Teachers are very kind and they take careof me,” Fatima said, her dark brown eyes glistening with joy.
Mothers from villages in Peshawar are encouraged to enrol their children into school Picture: Facebook/Alif Ailaan
She became one of 73,000 children enrolled in school due toa joint project launched in 2013 by – an educationreform campaign funded by the UK Department for InternationalDevelopment but run by Pakistanis – and local non-profitorganisation (RSPN).
The project has helped raise awareness in rural Pakistanabout the importance of learning as well as mobilise communitiesto demand quality education for their children from theirpolitical representatives and education department officials.
Despite a constitutional article guaranteeing the right ofevery child in Pakistan to a free education, social researchersblame poverty, a conservative culture and run-down schoolfacilities for the decision by many poor families to keep theirchildren, especially their daughters, from school.
RSPN says much of the success of the project is owed to itsgrassroots community and village campaigners who use creativeways to get their message across such as public walks throughthe villages to raise awareness and coordinating with religiousleaders to spread the word.
Social workers report that the most frequently reportedreason for girls not attending school is their parents’unwillingness to send them, citing difficult access toschools, poverty and cultural sensitivities.
A recent report said 11% of young girls inPakistan are married before the age of 15, jeopardising theirrights to health, education and protection and fathers needed tobe convinced that education was a better path.
Uzma Nazir, a campaigner in Bahawalpur, found that in onecase she had to appeal to a father’s sense of religious duty aswell as his guilt over spending excess cash on tobacco.
“If you could afford to smoke daily and have enough moneyfor Dish TV, then it meant that you could afford to pay for yourchildren’s educational expenses,” Nazir said she told him.
She added that every Muslim man and woman had theresponsibility for gaining an education. In the end she helpedhim enrol his three daughters in school.
Source: Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement, 2013-14
Another effective argument that campaigners use are theeconomic advantages to an education.It wasn’t hard to convince Sukhaan Mai to send all her sevendaughters and son to school.
Mai, who lives in a village 25 miles from Dera GhaziKhan city in central Pakistan, earns 8000 Pakistani rupees($76) a month, working as a day labourer, picking cotton andharvesting wheat in peak season.
Her biggest wish was for a better life for her children,which included sending them all to school, especially herphysically-challenged daughter Memoona, 12.
“If my children will get an education there will be so manybenefits in their future for better livelihood and they willgain the knowledge about good and bad,” said Mai in a Skypeinterview from her home.
According to the United Nations’ (ILO), about 75% of Pakistani working womenaged 15 and above were in the agricultural sector in 2010-2011where working conditions were harsh and the wages were low.
Global evidence suggests that one additional year ofschooling can increase a woman’s earning by 10% to 20%.
So far, the project has raised the awareness of nearly 250,000 people about the value of education. Rural communities have also lobbied for improvements in 741 schools – many of which were functioning without electricity, had no drinking water and were missing toilets and boundary walls.
But social workers say there is still much work to be done.
“In Pakistan, there is a need of an environment where equal access to education is provided from birth. If we manage to do that .. I guarantee that will lead to a brighter and prosperous future,” said Mosharraf Zaidi, campaign director of Alif Ailaan.
The , the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, corruption and climate change.
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