Among all the talk about ‘knowledge economy’ it is easy to forget that universal schooling is a relatively new phenomenon. Mandated first in a few European countries in the 18th century, it did not reach many others until the 20th. And the idea that women have an equal right to be educated frequently encountered stiff opposition, often from the privileged who feared that knowledgeable females would upset the social status quo. Just about everywhere, the right to women’s education was hard won: for instance Bal Gangadhar Tilak, one of the influential leaders of Indian independence movement, campaigned vociferously for decades against sending girls to school, complaining that it would lead to increased competition for jobs and to women neglecting their ‘domestic duties’. Mary Carpenter, the acclaimed Victorian education reformer, maintained that neatness and needlework, rather than a full academic curriculum, were ‘essential to a woman’. Fast forward to 2024 and even though the gap between male and female educational attainment has narrowed world-wide, there are still many places where women lag behind, even in something as basic as literacy. According to UNESCO, women today account for almost two-thirds of all adults unable to read. So how did we get here? And how can we close this gap? Iszi Lawrence follows the story of women’s education with Jane Martin, Professor of Social History of Education at Birmingham University; Parimala V. Rao, Professor of the History of Education at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi; Dr. Karen Teoh, Associate of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard and World Service listeners. (Photo: Teenage girls and boys learning in classroom. Credit: Maskot/Getty Images)
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Welcome to the Forum from the BBC World Service.
I'm Izzy Lawrence.
Today I'll be talking about a set of attitudes that some of us have encountered from our friends, families or even teachers.
I had dreams.
I wanted to actually go to university.
And then I was just told, nope, nope, you're a girl, you go get a job and get married.
They thought girls couldn't ever be a doctor.
I said, I want to play the bass.
And they said, girls don't play the bass.
Yes.
We're looking at women's education and development, how it started, why it wasn't always the same as boys, schooling and where it needs to head next.
The voices you heard there were of World Service listeners who responded to our call out on Facebook and they talked about a situation which they faced a few decades ago.
Has it improved since then?