Education is the most powerful
weapon which you can use to change the world."
Gender inequality in education is extreme. Girls are less likely to access
school, to remain in school or to achieve in education. Education helps men and
women claim their rights and realise their potential in the economic, political
and social arenas. It is also the single most powerful way to lift people out of
poverty. Education plays a particularly important role as a foundation for
girls’ development towards adult life. It should be an intrinsic part of any
strategy to address the gender-based discrimination against women and girls that
remains prevalent in many societies. The following links will further explain
the necessity of girls’/women’s education.
Everybody has the right to education, which has been recognised since the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948. The right to free and
compulsory primary education, without discrimination and of good quality, has
been reaffirmed in all major international human rights conventions. Many of
these same instruments encourage, but do not guarantee, post-primary education.
These rights have been further elaborated to address issues like quality and
equity, moving forward the issue of what the right to education means, and
exploring how it can be achieved. As a minimum: states must ensure that basic
education is available, accessible, acceptable and adaptable for all. (4A
scheme) The right of girls to education is one of the most critical of all
rights – because education plays an important role in enabling girls and women
to secure other rights.
Cultural and traditional values stand between girls and their prospects for
education. The achievement of girls’ right to education can address some of
societies’ deeply rooted inequalities, which condemn millions of girls to a life
without quality education – and, therefore, also all too often to a life of
missed opportunities. Improving educational opportunities for girls and women
helps them to develop skills that allow them to make decisions and influence
community change in key areas. One reason for denying girls and women their
right to an education is rarely articulated by those in charge: that is their
fear of the power that girls will have through education. There is still some
resistance to the idea that girls and women can be trusted with education.
Education is also seen in some societies as a fear of change and now with
globalization, the fear becomes even greater- fear to lose the cultural
identity, fear of moving towards the unknown or the unwanted, fear of dissolving
in the many others.
Educating girls and women is an important step in overcoming poverty. Inequality
and poverty are not inevitable. “The focus on poverty reduction enables the
right to education to be a powerful tool in making a change in the lives of
girls and women. Poverty has been universally affirmed as a key obstacle to the
enjoyment of human rights, and it has a visible gender profile. The main reason
for this is the fact that poverty results from violations of human rights,
including the right to education, which disproportionately affect girls and
women. Various grounds of discrimination combine, trapping girls in a vicious
downward circle of denied rights. Denial of the right to education leads to
exclusion from the labour market and marginalisation into the informal sector or
unpaid work. This perpetuates and increases women’s poverty.”
Women in Islam played an important role in the foundations of many Islamic
educational institutions, such as Fatima al-Fihri's founding of the University
of Al Karaouine in 859. This continued through to the Ayyubid dynasty in the
12th and 13th centuries, when 160 mosques (places of worship) and madrasahs
(places of education) were established in Damascus, 26 of which were funded by
women through the Waqf (charitable trust or trust law) system. Half of all the
royal patrons for these institutions were also women.
According to the Sunni scholar Ibn Asakir in the 12th century, there were
opportunities for female education in the medieval Islamic world, writing that
women should study, earn ijazahs (academic degrees), and qualify as scholars and
teachers. This was especially the case for learned and scholarly families, who
wanted to ensure the highest possible education for both their sons and
daughters.Ibn Asakir had himself studied under 80 different female teachers in
his time. According to a hadith attributed to Muhammad, he praised the women of
Medina because of their desire for religious knowledge:
"How splendid were the women of the ansar; shame did not prevent them from
becoming learned in the faith."
While it was not common for women to enroll as students in formal classes, it
was common for women to attend informal lectures and study sessions at mosques,
madrasahs and other public places. While there were no legal restrictions on
female education, some men did not approve of this practice, such as Muhammad
ibn al-Hajj (d. 1336) who was appalled at the behaviour of some women who
informally audited lectures in his time:
While women accounted for no more than one percent of Islamic scholars prior to
the 12th century, there was a large increase of female scholars after this. In
the 15th century, al-Sakhawi devotes an entire volume of his 12-volume
biographical dictionary al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʻ to female scholars, giving information
on 1,075 of them.More recently, the scholar Mohammad Akram Nadwi, currently a
researcher from the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, has written 40 volumes on
the muḥaddithāt (the women scholars of ḥadīth), and found at least 8,000 of
them.
If a man is educated,just one person is educated,but if a woman is educated
whole generation is educated.Gathering my ideas I could say"Education teaches
the basics of knowledge while learning develops their understanding and use."
maryamshaheen