Focus on keeping girls in school

Standing before a classroom of young boys, Zuhro Asrorova smiles while explaining her reasons for attending school. One of only two girls in her class in the rural village of Shakhonor, 5 km north of the Khatlon provincial capital of Kurgantube, the 14-year-old thinks carefully before answering. "I want to complete my education so that one day I can become a dressmaker," she told IRIN. But young Zuhro's case is also unusual. Although she attends class, her twin sister Fatma labours in a nearby cotton field, earning just US $.50 a month - another sad statistic of the increasing number of young Tajik girls dropping out of school. A GROWING NUMBER OF DROP OUTS According to recent figures, an increasing number of girls in the impoverished mountainous state are leaving school before reaching grade nine. "There are no girls attending grades 10 and 11, but we have 35 in grade two," the deputy head of school No. 43, Sadriddin Boboev, told IRIN. "Basically, once the girls complete their primary education there is a tendency for them to drop out," he confirmed. And while 222 of the 524 registered students in his school were girls, the problem was worrying, he said. For one reason or another, once compulsory education was completed, many girls simply dropped out. "This is a big problem. Once the girls drop out, their friends and neighbours follow," the school master explained, noting that the real problem was the parents, who simply didn't know the value of education. According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the exact reasons for this phenomenon have yet to be determined, prompting the Tajik Ministry of Education, with support from the UN agency, to survey two schools in the capital Dushanbe, along with one school in Hisor and another in Vahdat district. "Even if the increasing rate of girls dropping out of the school is dramatic at present, I don't think the root causes of girls' exclusion are stronger than before," Nouchine Yavari d'Hellencourt, a researcher for the recent report, 'A Qualitative Survey on Girls' Education Issues in Tajikistan, told IRIN in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe. "Tajikistan has always been a patriarchal, traditional and rural country, and civil society has never been mobilised by girls' education. It [educating girls] was a decision of the [Soviet] state imposed from the top." The survey concluded that there were three main factors behind girls dropping out: poverty; family expenses and priorities; and gender socialisation. POVERTY It is not difficult to understand the impact poverty has on Tajik families. The poorest of the former Soviet republics, over 83 percent of the country's 6.5 million population lives below the national poverty line, according to the World Bank, and a full 17 percent is considered destitute. Additionally, some parents explained that the withdrawal of their daughters from school was because of other factors than poverty: insecurity, distance to school, hostile attitude of the school towards their daughter, choice of the father or older brother, or poor health of the daughter or mother. FAMILY EXPENSES AND PRIORITIES But despite extreme poverty, the survey noted it was not just the very poor whose daughters did not complete their education. In fact, it found that it was not poverty as such which was relevant, but spending priorities, and often spending on girls' education was not a priority for many families that were interviewed. In short, the absence of girls at schools could not only be explained by the economic factor, but also by the family's priorities regarding their expenditure. "The report says that most of the families have difficulties in sending all their children to school because of extra expenses for stationery, clothes, etc," Yukie Mokuo, UNICEF country head, explained. "When the moment comes to choose among the children, it is a girl, usually after [attending] primary school - aged 12 or 13 - that will cease to attend." According to d'Hellencourt, the obligation to include education in family budgets did not exist during the Soviet period. Families had free access to all basic public services, including education, health and housing, and there was no employment problem. Their money could be spent on what was not provided for by the state. GENDER SOCIALISATION As for gender socialisation, according to the report the desertion of girls from schools was based on two characteristics of traditional Tajik culture. The first is that of gender disparity and different roles imposed upon girls and boys by the community and family. Gender inequality is deeply routed in Tajik culture and boys and girls are raised and socialised differently within the family. The main sphere of girls' and women's lives was the home (housework, childbearing and rearing, family maintenance), the report said.

More girls in Tajikistan are dropping out from school before reaching grade nine

Then there was the issue of the social and economic function of the male-female division of roles within the community. Within Tajik families, the purpose of education is not the same for girls as for boys. "The son is raised to support his family and take care of his parents when they are old, while the girl is raised to serve her future husband's family. The daughter is thus a temporary member of her own family, and once she comes of age the parents are eager to have her married," it added. "Many parents, knowing they would never be able to afford university fees, see little reason for their girls to attend grade 10 and 11," Sadriddin Boboev conceded. "It's enough for girls to read and count - completing just primary education. After that parents see little reason in continuing." Zuhro's mother, Shamigul, who supplements the family budget by growing tomatoes, confesses she wished both her daughters could go to school. "We have five children of school age, but my husband is unemployed and has difficulty meeting expenses," the 40-year-old explained. "We are trying to send our eldest son to university as he ultimately will be the one responsible for the family. I would like to send my daughter [Zuhro] as well, but it's up to my boss [husband]," she said. That sentiment is indicative of the role and function of school in gender perspective. One of the main reasons why, for some segments of Tajik society, the prestige of school has been reduced is that education no longer guarantees, as it once did, a job. Girls know that even after graduation they may not be able to find well paid jobs, UNICEF's Mokuo explained, adding: "Most families that were interviewed do not accept the obvious, which is that at the very basis of the international community's mobilisation: excluding girls from school not only deprives them of a right, it also reduces considerably the chance for their children to have access to education and a better life." Added to that is the role of conservative interpretations of religion in discriminatory practices. "Religion continues to be very influential in private, family and community life, and is interpreted by some as condoning the control of men over women's social life, housework, birth control, forced marriages, domestic violence and/or exclusion of women from inheritance," the UNICEF country head observed. "Patriarchal traditions thus gain a double legitimacy rooted both in cultural identity and religion," Mokuo added. A WAY FORWARD Such sentiment reflects the challenge at hand. "Things can change but in social and cultural fields it takes time. Tajik society must rethink its traditional values and practices and work on them," d'Hellencourt observed, emphasising this cannot be done from outside. And while UNICEF and international organisations can support this effort by training, advocacy, school materials and pedagogic tools, the real work has to be done by society itself, led by Tajik political and social actors, community leaders and intellectuals, she stressed.

Zuhro and her sister smiling outside their home in Shakhonor village, Khatlon province

According to the Iranian-born researcher, such a strategy could be undertaken through seven directions: the re-valuing and protection of teachers and school; training teachers, pupils (girls and boys) about human rights, gender issues, vulnerability assessment committees and violence against women at school; awareness raising on gender and girls' education issues at the community level; action against girls in isolation; alternative education for girls who dropped out of school or are at risk of doing so; support for poor families; and better coordination among international organisations involved in girls' education. Given that it was no longer rational to educate and socialise children with traditional values when the country was increasingly open to the modern world, she noted that the increasing awareness of parents about girl's education should include their familiarisation with modern values of individual and human rights. "The issue of girls' education is not an isolated question; it is at the centre of gender relations which are themselves articulated with the patriarchal value, deeply rooted in tradition," she stated, noting Tajikistan's approach to education needed to be modernised. Meanwhile, for girls such as Zuhro and her twin sister Fatma, how quickly that can be achieved remains to be seen. Standing alongside her sister, who had just returned from working in the fields, she remarks: "I want to stay in school, but I would like my sister to join me."