NEW DELHI, 24 September 2005 — An Indian government plan to give free higher education to girls from one-child families is a positive step but may not have the desired effect of redressing gender disparities, activists said yesterday.
The initiative, announced on Thursday, is being viewed by education and women’s rights activists as an attempt to counter the country’s male-weighted sex ratio by rewarding families with female children.
“The whole decision is to give support to the girl child in respect to female foeticide. That’s the main issue,” said Narayan Banerjee, director of the Center for Women’s Development Studies, a research group in Delhi.
Although women outnumber men in most regions of the world, India has 933 women for every 1,000 men, according to the most recent government census in 2001.
A societal preference against females, who are generally treated as second class citizens in India, coupled with technology that allows parents to discover the sex of the child prior to birth have contributed to the declining number of women in the country.
“I’m a little doubtful that this will reduce female foeticide because the prevalence is in urban areas with propertied classes who can afford to send children to school,” Banerjee told AFP. “It’s done with good intentions but it will have a limited impact.” Development professionals said many factors, apart from the cost of education, played a role in sex selection. In particular, they cited the issue of dowry that many parents still give to the groom’s family in order to facilitate their daughter’s marriage.
The new plan, which will take effect from the next school year, will pay for full secondary school tuition for girls from single-child families and half the fees if there are two girls. A lone girl is also eligible for a stipend of up to 2,000 rupees ($45) a month toward university education.
“On the face of it, it’s attractive. But there are certain taboos which we need to tackle,” said Abijit De, senior program manager for Deepalaya, which runs schools for low-income children. De said the organization had found parents were often reluctant to send their female children to school, even when the cost was minimal. “Even if I educate my girl, what difference does it make? I still have to get my girl married off. That’s the cycle I have to break,” explained De.
In addition, because benefits are not given to daughters in families that have sons, the pool of beneficiaries may be limited.
“I would make it much more inclusive so all girls get this,” said Geeta Menon, director of girls’ education programs at CARE, an international development agency.
“This is coming at the secondary level but 50 percent of girls don’t move beyond class five,” added Menon, saying the “dismal” quality of education needed to be addressed as well.
