Post-Cairo Population Policy: Does Promoting Girls' Schooling Miss the Mark?

Abstract

This article discusses the shortfalls of the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) regarding the closing of the gender gap in schooling and the goal of social justice. It is argued that the deficits in socioeconomic status are compelling forces influencing educational status. The examples of Thailand and Viet Nam illustrate that socioeconomic inequalities in both nonsocialist and socialist developing countries are wide. Population specialists must be sensitive to the socioeconomic inequalities and focus on improving the educational status of all low income populations. Where limited resources may force a decision to improve education for one gender over another decisions should justify on social justice as well as pragmatic grounds the greater efficacy of lowering fertility and infant mortality through improved education for women in countries with a wide gender gap. The authors argue that the goals should be to raise enrollment ratios and the quality of schooling for all children and to give priority to reducing socioeconomic inequalities for both genders and only a secondary priority to a specific gender focus. In many countries the gender gap is closing and a strong policy emphasizing closing it is no longer needed. The effect of female education on fertility is only one part of the emphasis on female education and only one way to lower fertility. To emphasize one factor in fertility decline would be ill advised. Examples from the Philippines and Arab countries illustrate that even in high female education countries fertility has not declined very much. The ICPD Plan of Action calls for universal primary schooling for boys and girls and for wide and early access for girls and women to secondary and higher levels of education. Inequality in schooling is easier to document than is socioeconomic inequality.

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