As part of its partnership with UNGEI (United Nations Girls Initiative) ASPBAE has been commissioned by the UNICEF to develop a Gender Equality in Education Report Card for South Asia as part of the UN Girls Education Initiative (UNGEI).
The main purpose of the Gender Equality in Education Watch Report Card is to try and integrate a gender perspective across the different EFA goals and beyond. The current EFA Global Monitoring Report (GMR) and other monitoring frameworks assess gender only under goal 3 of the MDG rather than as a cross-cutting theme.
A second purpose is to try and link more closely to the advocacy of the women‟s movement around MDG 3 and address the problems of using only gender parity in basic education as an indicator of gender equality.
ASPBAE commissioned Swati Narayan as author and lead researcher for this study. Based on a number of virtual meetings and teleconferences, ASPBAE developed the methodological framework with a draft set of quantitative indicators and qualitative case studies.
Nitya Rao, ASPBAE‟s representative to the UNGEI Global Advisory Committee presented the conceptual framework at the UNGEI GAC meeting that was held on in June 27-28, in New York.
The Report Card would seek to build on existing indices and also throw up new indicators, in order to take note of South Asian context-specificity on the one hand, and for monitoring performance from a gender equality perspective on the other. The written text accompanying the scoring could highlight the major areas of strength and of weakness within state policies as far as attaining gender equality is concerned.
The Report Card would rely on existing datasets around the indicators in different countries. In addition, ASPBAE would also rely on UNGEI partners to provide inputs on quantitative data and qualitative case studies to illustrate the differences on the ground of particular policies and processes and to deepen qualitative analysis in areas were cross-country comparable quantitative data is sparse.
Building on the 2008 Asia Pacific School Report Card developed by ASPBAE in collaboration with the GCE (Global Campaign for Education), the Gender Equality in Education Report Card will draw on the foundation of analysis around: achievement of universal basic education, political will, growth in enrolments, quality inputs for teaching and learning, equal opportunities, transparency and accountability.
The Report Card is targeted for completion in September/October 2009.
ASPBAE is currently collaborating with UNGEI to finalise the proposed indicators and case studies, and to agree on the support that UNGEI and ASPBAE partners in the region may provide in filling data gaps in the research and in developing the case studies.
Launch of the Gender Equality Watch for Education in South Asia
