Marriage & Household Chores Affect Girl Child Education, Reveals Study by CRY
The survey by CRY reveals that the most prominent reasons refraining girls from going to school are marriage and their requirement for household chores. Other reasons are conveyance issues, menstruation, illness and unawareness of government schemes.
According to a survey conducted by CRY, girls of four states of India are affected the most by their dependency on someone else for going to school. The percentage of girls of Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Bihar, and Haryana that are unable to go to school because of their dependency on someone to drop them is as high as 90%.
On International Women’s Day - 8th March 2019, the Child Rights and You (CRY) organisation released a study that surveyed several reasons that enable and disable the access and continuation of education for girls. The study also discussed the roles played by incentive schemes in boosting girl child education in India.
The biggest disabler for girls going to school is their dependency on others to take them to school. Other big factors are frequent absenteeism and the discomfort of girls because of the absence of a female teacher which makes for 29% and 18% respectively of these cases.
On exploring the reasons for absenteeism, the organisation found that about 52% of girls used to be absent because of frequent illness. 46% of girls of these four states could not go to school because of their engagement in household chores.
Infrastructural issues like unavailability of transport and poor roads were other reasons as to why girls could not go to school. The girls of Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat cited the cost of transportation and distance as some of the major deterrents they face.
In the states of Haryana, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, an important reason for restraining girls from going to school was menstruation. The study stated that 87% of schools have separate toilets for girls but most of them do not have hand wash and running water facilities. The study also included interviews of more than 3,000 people from 1,604 households, throughout these four states.
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Self-motivation and inspiration from family were the most cited enablers or motivating factors that helped girls go to school. These two reasons made up 88 and 87% respectively. 94% of girls did not receive any resistance from their families and 70% of girls had received government benefits from the school.
The most spontaneous response among the prevalent factors affecting a girl’s education was the need for female labour for household chores. It was found by the researchers that on combining the aided and the spontaneous responses the chief factor which emerged responsible for affecting the education of girls was marriage. It was followed closely by household chores and the cost of education.
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Other reasons were love affairs and elopement of girls, their requirement to care for siblings, conventional gender roles and the physical insecurities of girls. It was also declared that 40% of parents are not aware of the government schemes for girl child education.
Inputs from NDTV