Mozambique: staying alive/IPS MS Solidarity 2000-News/

Women Miss the Boat of Knowledge

By Antonio Gumede

MAPUTO, June 2000 (IPS) - Cultural barriers and poverty have forced millions of Mozambican women to watch the boat of conventional knowledge sail past them from the sidelines.

Mozambique's Prime Minister, Pascoal Mocumbi, relishes the thought of likening gender discrimination to sexual apartheid.

Addressing a conference on the evaluation of the implementation of the Beijing Platform of Action in Mozambique recently he decided to go philosophical and paraphrased a universally accepted but somewhat worn-out cliché: "educate a man and you educate an individual. Educate a woman and you educate society."

The importance of women's education in improving household welfare, opening income generating opportunities, lowering infant mortality and lowering the reproduction rate of women is well-documented.

But in a country where only 4 per cent of the population has finished some form of high school and one in two every individuals cannot read or write, taking a gender perspective when philosophising about education may, on the face of it, appear to be a misplaced approach for a senior government official.

Unfortunately, available statistical data suggests that gender inequality in education is a serious matter in Mozambique.

The fact that the Mozambican population is generally underprivileged when it comes to access to education is undeniable: the population census of 1997 established that only 39.6 per cent of the population, or 6.4 million people, could, at the time, read and write.

The population of university graduates was estimated at just over 5.000 people. Mozambique's literacy rate is the lowest in southern Africa and is even worse than that of war-torn Angola, which boast a literacy rate of 45 per cent.

Nevertheless, official statistics suggest that illiteracy affect the two sexes differently: it is evidently more widespread among women, who constitute 52 per cent of Mozambique's 17 million inhabitants.

Only 2.2 million of the total population of 8.4 million women could read and write in 1997. The urban-rural divide in access to education shows that in both areas women are worse off than man: only 54 per cent of women in urban areas are literate while the rate of men who had access to education is estimated at 80 per cent of the urban male population.

The limited access to education among women is explained by a combination of low enrolment rates of girls and high levels of female drop-outs in the education system.

The government estimates that girls represent only 42 per cent of the school population in primary education, 36 per cent in secondary education while in tertiary education women constitute only 20 per cent of the student population.

Prime Minister Mocumbi says the government is making an effort in order to ensure the permanence of girls in the different levels of education by reducing the population of school drop-outs. The government's five-year target is to increase the proportion of girls in primary school from 43 per cent in 2000 to around 50 per cent in the year 2004.

That may turn out to be a difficult task when cultural barriers and traditional custom are taken into account. Custom in Mozambique seems to put emphasis on the reproductive role of women which influences the assignment of role at household and community levels.

One of the reasons attributed to the high failure rates that lead to high drop-out levels is that from a certain age, girls are expected to assist in household chores, a practice ostensibly designed to prepare them for the "married life".

The impact of this approach is double-sided: on the one hand, it leaves girls with little time to devote to studying, and on the other hand it forces them to focus on marriage and caring for the family as the ultimate goals of adult womanhood.

Another problem that emanates from the traditional role of women is that families do not value girls' education as an investment because once a girl is married she is expected to contribute to the family of the spouse.

Hence the traditional bias towards boys when families weigh up the opportunity costs of educating their children. One of the most cited examples of the prevalence of this tradition in Maputo is that of two children of a middle class family of civil servants who sat for entry examination at Eduardo Mondlane University, the main tertiary education in Mozambique located in the capital city, Maputo.

The girl passed the tests and the boy failed. The parents pleaded with the university to transfer the marks attained by the girl to boy so that he could gain access to the university and further his education. The university obviously turned down the strange request.

The limited number of women in the institutions of higher learning in Mozambique was the main cause that led to the creation of the Academic Women Nucleus (NUMAC) (Núcleo da Mulher Académica), a non-governmental organisation that focuses on assisting women to gain access to higher education.

According to Rosita Alberto, president of NUMAC, the organisation provides academic support to women preparing to sit entry examinations in the country's tertiary education institutions in exchange of nominal fee of around 100,000 Meticais, the equivalent of US$ 7.

The limited educational opportunities for women is reflected in the number of women in decision making positions. For example, only 1 in every 5 ministers and deputy ministers in the Mozambique's current cabinet is a woman.

Likewise only 30 per cent out of the 250 deputies in Mozambique's parliament are women while of the 790 town councillors in Mozambique's 33 municipalities, only 235, or 30 per cent are women. If Prime Minister Mocumbi's assertion that educating a woman bring more social benefits than teaching a man to write and read is accurate, perhaps it explains why impoverished Mozambique is still such a highly individualistic society.