Abstract

Education is an important human capital. It is the fundamental right of every human being irrespective of gender to acquire knowledge through education. Social scientists have highlighted the significance of female education without which socioeconomic growth, especially in Asia, remains slow. However, gender disparity in education exists in rural areas of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bhutan, India, Iran, Nepal and Bangladesh (UNESCO 2015). This situation is attributed to a number of socioeconomic and cultural factors. In order to explore these factors, the present study was conducted in three districts of the Punjab province in Pakistan during March 2016. The province is divided into three different zones: Northern, Central and Southern. From each zone, one district was purposively  selected as the study area. From each of the selected districts (Sargodha, Khushab and Bhakar), 100 rural households each were selected through multi-stage simple random sampling technique. The data was collected from 300 household heads and their spouses through in-depth individual interviews to find out the difference in opinion of the male and female respondents. The collected data was analysed using SPSS. Paired t-test was used to find out the difference in responses of male and female respondents. In order to find out the difference in intensity of factors in the three districts, F-test was applied.

Results showed that a highly significant age difference (χ2¬=50.121 and P<0.05) between the male family heads and their spouses. Similar trend was found in educational status of male heads and their spouses. Cross tabulation indicated that educational status of wives was low as compared to their husbands. Analysis showed that a number of socioeconomic factors are responsible for existing gender disparity with reference to education in the study areas. Respondents identified low income, high educational expenditures, low educational level of parents (especially the mother), and security concerns of parents regarding sexual harassment as the major factors impeding female education. Results of the F-test showed that there exists difference in intensity of factors in the three study districts of Punjab which contribute towards gender disparity in education. Highest intensity ( =2.74/3.00) was found in district Bhakar as it is a remote district of Punjab with higher poverty rate, followed by district Khushab and Sargodha.

References

GoP 2015, ‘Statistical Year Book 2014-15’, Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, Ministry of Finance, Economic Affairs, Revenue, Statistics and Privatization, Statistics Division, Government of Pakistan.

UNESCO 2015, ‘Global Education Monitoring Report- The Education for All Development Index’, <http://en.unesco.org/gem-report/>, accessed 16 September 2016.