By Rashika Fazali

Image Credit: Melissa Cheung in Today’s Parent 

Here’s the truth: the battle of the sexes will continue for eternity. It’s how we thrive as humans. We constantly check the statistics to see which sex is superior or which gender does it best. But often, it’s not about competition. There is a deeper problem. Is the issue with accessibility, lack of finances, the genetic makeup or simply put, gender discrimination? Or can this be the way of life? Fortunately, no.

Teaching, A Feminised Profession

One of the biggest contributors to a child’s life is education. It is a powerful tool in accomplishing gender equality and propagating gender inequality. Over the years, television commercials have equated the gender role of a teacher to a female who wears a sari. It’s always a female wearing a sari. Does this association come from the knowledge that women are nurturers? Therefore, a teacher must be a female?

In the lower levels of education, teaching has been defined as a ‘female profession’ due to gender norms and stereotypes. According to School Census Report 2017 done by the Ministry of Education, we have a total of 260,343 teachers in Sri Lanka. 71.8% are female teachers. Around the globe, the numbers weave a similar story. According to the Global Education Monitoring Report 2019, the 2017 world figures were 94% for pre-primary education, 66% for primary and 54% for secondary education adding up to 83.1% of female teachers.

Males in Higher Teaching Positions

However, when it comes to education leadership positions, we see a huge disproportion with female principals only accounting to 28% (statistics from 2009 as mentioned in a study titled ‘Women and the Teaching Profession’). As we don’t have statistics for today, we can only assume that this disparity still exists.

As we move from teaching in primary to tertiary education, the gender gap widens. The University of Grants Commission statistics report for 2018 showed that 58% were permanent female university lecturers, 44.4% were senior lecturers, and respectively 32% were associate professors and university permanent professors. The higher the academic level, the lower the number of females in higher teaching positions. This is not something exclusive to Sri Lanka, but is seen in almost all countries. This gender discrimination stems from the treatment of women in society; women are notoriously looked upon as second-class citizens. It’s this society that determines that a woman’s place is at home, and therefore achieving academic heights and progressing in their careers is not widely encouraged.

Given this, our literacy rate is high – 93% for males and 91% for females according to the Global Gender Gap Report 2020. This means our education system is providing the essential learning tools to children and adults in order to acquire and hone the ability to read and write. But that doesn’t mean, all is well.

The Battle of the Sexes in Tertiary Education

When we go down the academic level for students from tertiary to primary education, we will see the gender gap slowly closing in. According to the Global Gender Gap Report 2020, enrolment in tertiary education for female students is slightly higher than male students with 23.4% to 15.8%. There has a been a slight decrease from 2017 numbers with females accounting to 24% and males 15.6%. Statistics from the Ministry of Education University Grants Commission noted that in the academic year of 2018, 52.7% of male students enrolled in postgraduates while 63% of female students enrolled in the undergraduate program. In fields such as engineering and architecture, males dominated the market in both undergraduate and postgraduate. Females lead in education and agriculture in postgraduate enrolment, and arts and management and commerce in undergraduate enrolment. But we see a different pattern in graduate and postgraduate output. There was a higher output for females in arts, law, agriculture, allied health sciences and indigenous medicine while postgraduate output for females were in arts, education, indigenous medicine and agriculture. Engineering was the one field that males had a higher output in both graduate and postgraduate.

Why are Women Under-Represented in Engineering?

Thanks to gender stereotypes, engineering is a male-dominated subject. As kids, our parents and society taught us that cars are for boys and dolls are for girls. This spills into every aspect of a child’s life. Every child goes through a moulding process thanks to societal rules that enforces them to think and behave according to an assigned gender role. This even includes what either gender should study and what their career should be. On top of that, there are also cultural and societal issues that impact both genders in education. Some cultures believe certain jobs like teaching are good or made for women because they are considered decent, respectable jobs. On a societal scale, schools in some parts of the country do not have the science stream (known as 1C schools). This forces children to take up subjects or a stream they have no interest in. If a child comes from a low-income background, education is the only way to move forward. But in this catch-22 situation, children could lose out on education due to unavailability of certain streams, family problems, infrastructure and most importantly, poverty that inevitably forces the child to dropout from school. In some instances, poverty may prevent children from attending school altogether.

Child and Student Population

Sri Lanka Child Activity Survey done in 2016 revealed that we have 4,571,442 children between the ages of 5 and 17. 9.1% of the child population don’t attend school – 10% for boys and 9.8% for girls. Housekeeping activities was the main reason stopping 6.9% of the child population from attending school. 2.3% of the total child population engaged in economic activities. This same survey done in 2008/09 reported 12.9%, showing us significant improvement. Majority of the children not attending school is in the age group of 15-17 with 39.7%. The study also revealed that most children in this age group attended school and then stop temporarily (e.g. awaiting local exam results) or permanently (after taking the G.C.E O/Level exams).

The numbers above show us that Sri Lanka has improved drastically in educating their children, but we still have a long way to go in providing every child with an education. The School Census Report of 2017 revealed that 4,424,713 enrolled at schools out of which 49.7% were girls and 50.2% were boys. The gender disparity here is quite low, but when it comes to passing exams, we see an inverse of the above figures. In 2017, 52% of girls of the total number of students who passed obtained marks above the cut off at the Grade 5 scholarship examination, but only 49% of girls of the total number of students sat for the exam. The latest figures from 2019 showed that 54% of girls obtained marks above the cut off while 50% of girls sat for the exam. There was a higher frequency in girls scoring marks in the 180-200 range in 2017, but both genders were in par in 2019. A larger percentage of girls scored more in the 80-99 marks range in 2017 and 141-160 in 2019 while boys scored more in the 60-79 marks range in 2017 and 121-140 in 2019. This supports improvement on both genders with girls significantly outperforming boys at the grade 5 scholarship examination.

Gender Patterns in O/Level and A/Level Results

The Department of Examinations revealed that out of 157,616 girls who sat for the O/L exam in 2017, 79% qualified for A/L. Out of 154, 848 boys who sat the exam, 63% qualified for A/L. The department also revealed that 148,660 girls sat for the A/Levels exams in 2017  out of which 105,675 or 71.08% of girls passed and were eligible for university entry. 2019 statistics shows us that 105,255 girls sat the exam out of which 69.5% of girls passed and were eligible for university entry. Out of 104, 670 boys who sat for the A/Level exam in 2017 and 81,912 boys in 2019, only a half of them passed the exam. In both years, boys failed the exams more than girls did by an increase of 2% from 2017.

Low Female Labour Participation

There is a pattern among boys and girls in all levels of education. From Grade 5 to university exams, girls performed relatively better than boys. Enrolment in universities for the undergraduate program is higher for females than males, but slightly lower in postgraduate for females. But why then do we have less female labour participation? The Annual Report of the Labour Force Survey for 2017 reported that female labour participation rate (LPR)is only 36.6% of the entire labour force. 82.5% of females have a degree or above, 49.9% have studied up to A/L, 30.8% studied till O/L, 32.9% have Grade 6 – 10 qualification and 31.4% have below Grade 5 qualification. In comparison to males, 86.8% have a degree or above, 79.2% have studied up to A/L, 67.1 till O/L, 76.9% have a Grade 6 – 10 qualification and 70.6% have a below Grade 6 qualification. This tells us that a higher percentage of males have dropped out of school after Grade 10, but a majority of males and females have also continued to purse higher education. Except there is one problem.

Education for females is not translating to getting jobs. The main reason to why Sri Lanka has a 74.3% of an economically inactive female population is due to 60.5% of females being involved in household activities as opposed to 4.9% of males. Some families discourage girls from working after marriage or after having children. Some cultures frown upon working girls. As gender stereotypes go, earning is a patriarchal role. This is just one reason amongst many. Others could also below to the gender stereotype that have over the years created certain personality traits and notions that a gender should adhere or follow. For example, society has dictated that girls shouldn’t work till late and this somehow aligns with a girl’s reputation. But that too depends on the job. Another reason could be a lack of preparing girls in getting jobs. If the system is only about educating girls, but not empowering them to seek jobs or the right job, this means that the education system is failing on our girls. Economic growth cannot take place by having an all-inclusive male culture. It needs the help of both genders. Gender empowerment and access to positive female and male role models needs to start at the bottom i.e. at school.

Underperforming Boys

On the other hand, as much as males are dominating the work force, the statistics also revealed that boys are underperforming in education. They are more likely to fail exams and score lower marks. Data from 2011 onwards showed that males have been gradually improving their performance in O/L exams from 50.3% in 2011 to 63% in 2017. However, their performance is still much lower than females noted as 65.7% in 2011 and 79% in 2017. A research paper titled ‘Gender Dimensions of Educational Access and Achievement in Sri Lanka’ produced in 2018 noted that underperformance in boys could be due to several reasons. First, a clear gender misconception was that education was of less importance for boys because their ability to earn money was innate regardless of education. This also clearly indicates that boys can easily find work. Second, many job prospects in rural areas were available for under-age boys, noted as one of the reasons for school dropouts. Third, parental oversight is much higher for girls than boys. Parents protect their girls fiercely while giving boys more freedom to life matters. Fourth, research also revealed that boys preferred male teachers over female teachers. Gender issues with the opposite sex is very likely, but the research also noted that majority of the girls preferred male teachers. Their counterparts were inclined to resort to disciplinary actions more often than male teachers and were more lenient towards female students. If students don’t like their teachers, that can demotivate them from studying and pursuing a higher education.

The current gender norms in education is detrimental to the whole system if we keep going this way. Boys are underperforming, but they belong to a large part of the labour force. Female are outperforming boys, but it is not translating to labour force figures. Teaching is a feminised profession and this could continue to produce underperforming boys. Males are in higher teaching positions despite the high female education performance. We can clearly see that something is wrong, but what are we doing about it?

(Editors Note: This article was written exclusively for bakamoono.lk and at the time of publication had not appeared in this form in any other publication)