The Promotion of Equal Access of Girls to Scientific, Technical and Vocational Education in Africa Case Study of Senegal

Mr. Mamadou SAGNANE*

* Director of Secondary and technical Education - Ministry of National Education - Senegal.

For nearly a quarter century now, the International Community, through the intermediary of the United Nations System, considering the complexity of relations between education and the development process, has been labouring to carve women a prime place, a pivotal status in society, where they are rightfully demanding a truly equal chance at education.

Hence, fortified by the basic premise that no nation in the world could prosper without social cohesion among it various components - the guarantee of a homogeneous society sealed by the virtues of collective solidarity - decision-makers worldwide have organized a series of international meetings characterized by straightforward debate about the major issues affecting the future of humanity. Among others, we are referring to:

- The World Conference on Education for All (1990);
- The World Summit for Children (1990);
- The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (1992);
- The Global Conference on Human Rights (1993);
- The International Conference on Population and Development (1994);
- The World Summit for Social Development;
- The Fourth World Conference on Women (1995)

But it is clearly the UNESCO Convention bearing on the Fight Against Discrimination in the Field of Education (1960) which was first devoted to reorienting values by extolling the basic reasons of human equality and advocating equal chances at education for women and girls.

The celebration of UNESCO's fiftieth anniversary was also a privileged occasion to stress the decisive role of education in preparing women and men to the exalting task of transforming the human condition by bringing back home and reclaiming their individual and collective destiny.

Having become aware of the serious risks and dangers that can arise from marginalizing women, principally because of outmoded and stereotyped thinking, the International Community has, through the three United Nations Conferences on Population held in Bucharest (1973), Mexico (1984) and Cairo (1994), and chiefly the four conferences on Women organized in Mexico (1975), in Copenhagen (1980), Nairobi (1980) and in Beijing (1995), inspired a whole series of works and studies which originated from the United Nations Decade of the Woman: Equality, Development and Peace, 1975 - 1985.

Our study, “The Promotion of Equal Access of Girls to Scientific, Technical and Vocational Education in Africa,” will borrow somewhat from statistics and previously formulated key concepts on the issue, as initiated by the International Labour Office and occasionally in collaboration with UNESCO.

As stipulated in the terms of reference, beyond the principal general issues linked to the status of girls and women in society, the perspectives related to their roles in socioeconomic development and current trends in job opportunities - principally in the field of education - and the extent to which this population enrolls in the technical and vocational education system, our study will generally attempt:

- to bring out the economic, sociological, technological and educational factors determining girls' orientation towards STVE;

- to assess measures currently underway in motion to help promote equal access for girls to STVE;

- to provide information on the teaching of the sciences, of technology and environment in relation to the girls' acquisition of knowledge in those diverse areas;

- and finally, to describe the future strategies and plans that must be implemented.

In light of these first observations, one might naturally wonder about the appropriateness of such a study concentrating on the education of girls in the scientific, technical and professional areas if it is indeed true that by focusing exclusively on the younger part of the population, one might risk falling into the same trap of discrimination within society.

Such a query might seem absurd, particularly for Africa, where women constitute over than 50% of the population, and where economic and social development is still linked to the emancipation of all its sons and daughters. Indeed, that emancipation will basically depend on the diverse yet complementary components of education and training.

Most women and girls in Africa can neither read nor write; this confines them to a pitiful status from every angle, whether at home, in school, in their community, or at work.

As victims of social burdens that confine them to the limited roles of keeper of the home and mere baby-maker, women truly have a hard time getting ahead through education and training, because of the distorting prism through which society views them and which, at the limit, keep resurging even in the work place. Despite adamant vows advocating democratization, women are still being put down at work because of diehard social and legal barriers.

However, given the many sensitization campaigns, perspectives on the recognized roles of girls are steadily losing ground. In fact, in vaunting their slogan “Educate a woman and you educate a Nation,” governments are demonstrating their heightened awareness that by endowing this vulnerable group with the tools of wisdom and know-how, they are offering it an opportunity to bring all its weight to bear in the nation's future by helping to fight effectively against injustice and discrimination.

Moreover, this revival can be seen in the many African countries included in the 1994 data base compiled by the International Labor Office. It revealed that from 1975 to 1992, an impressively rising number of women were engaged in non-agriculture related employment.

Job opportunity trends today are largely favorable, with girls and women gaining more and more access to specialized or technical professions, and even to administrative or director's posts, just like their counterparts in industrialized countries. At the same time, it would be difficult to analyze the employment trends because of the large proportion of jobs in the informal and farming sectors.

Still, this rosy picture should not hide the forest for the trees -most studies corroborate show just how much old prejudices are still entrenched regarding the choices girls make about school - most of them opt for predominantly literary studies, or those which because of their short term, cover specific areas generally reserved for girls -especially in the tertiary and social sectors. They are the most popular sections, due to certain cliches and socio-cultural factors which in the public imagination raise barriers not necessarily institutional but certainly sociological and linked to society's very cultural and religious values insidiously secreted in the back of the collective mind...

A priori, this might partially explain African leaders' efforts to encourage girls' orientation towards the scientific and technical streams in order to strengthen the female teaching potential in those areas. This would give girls a chance to identify with their elders who have succeeded in conquering the psychosis of failure.

ORIENTATION OF GIRLS TOWARDS SCIENTIFIC, TECHNICAL AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION

Faced with the same constraints, African countries indubitably are experiencing the same problems and remain on the receiving end of a whole set of factors, both positive and negative, which decide girls' orientation towards scientific, technical and professional education.

Senegal's example, since it illustrates the situation for the entire continent, will serve as a reference point and symbol in this study.

a) Economic Factors:

Statistics for 1992 reveal that out of a total population of 7,709,000 inhabitants with a growth rate of 2.8%, women represent 51.37%, a major proportion of which is struck by poverty, misery and illiteracy, so many evils that truly constitute blocks to economic and social development. As proof, in 1995, the female population represented 58% of the illiterate, indeed 78.8% among adult women. This certainly excludes a good number of them from decision-making bodies.

The summary table below clearly outlines these trends:

Table 1: Representation of Women at all levels of Education

Women	%	Entire Country %
- No school	76.5	69.0
- Primary Level	16.7	20.3
- Secondary Level, 1st Cycle	-	5.2
- Secondary Level, 2nd Cycle	3.8	2.0
- Higher Education	-	0.9
- Other	1.1	2.7
	0.3
	1.5

b) Sociological Factors

Besides religion, culture and tradition still remain encased in archaic molds that discourage the advancement of women. Indeed, many people are still convinced that marriage is the best future for a women. Moreover, society continues to remain ill-informed, mired in its thinking that the sub-sector of technical and vocational education is reserved primarily for men. Unfortunately, graduates in that field are still considered to be mere blue collar workers, when even the orientation policies so staunchly promoted insist on the democratic nature of education, offering equal chances of success to everyone, free of discrimination of any sort.

c) Technological Factors

Changes in the world of work are nonetheless inducing girls to invest themselves in those trades which can stimulate economic growth such as clothing, sewing/embroidery, processing enterprises, construction, transport, trade and entrepreneurship. However, the methods used are still outmoded, due to a notorious lack of training and modem technology.

d) Factors Related to Employment

The job market is so tight that men are hired first, and women are mainly handicapped by maternity leave, which renders them less cost-efficient on the professional plan.

Increasingly, however, given the lack of job opportunities other than those offered by the private sector - the sole provider of jobs - self-employment is being encouraged more and more and is reflected even in the type of training offered in many structures.

d) Educational Factors

Girls and boys have practically the same chances, at least until the age of 16, when it is no longer mandatory to attend school. The gap widens in secondary and higher education, as well as in technical and vocational education. In that regard, the figures for 1992 noted below speak eloquently of the typical situation in Senegal.

LEVEL	BOYS %	GIRLS %
*Pre-School	2	02
a) Gross Attendance Rate	-	-
b) Net Attendance Rate	67	50
	55	42
Primary	92	83
Secondary	22	12
Higher/Advanced	1.8	0.3

In general education, girls usually stop at the threshold of the university, while in science education, the choices offered to them are limited because of old-fashioned, backward ideas still alive in society.

In technical/vocational education, the proliferation of specialized training schools offers more opportunities, but there is often the keen problem of adequate means, for such structures have a private status, with rates often inaccessible to certain classes of society. Fortunately, in the specific case of Senegal, special sections are slowly being opened in secondary technical institutions with more affordable fees. Since they are more socially oriented, they help meet girls' pressing training needs, particularly in fields such as management, accounting, computer science, etc., and thereby help them realize legitimate aspirations.

CURRENT MEASURES TO PROMOTE EQUAL ACCESS OF GIRLS TO SCIENTIFIC, TECHNICAL AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION

In the past twenty years, numerous surveys have been conducted on the behavioral differences between men and women with regard to mathematics and natural sciences. The surveys focus on the performances of the two genders and their perception of the social role of those disciplines.

The value of these works has been to reveal a few highly significant facts: when they leave elementary school, girls on the whole obtain the same results as boys in math and natural sciences, and even better. Nonetheless, their performance lowers considerably at the end of the first cycle of secondary school, for they lose confidence in their ability to master these subjects and/or drop them when they become optional.

Even when they do well in school, girls tend to chose advanced studies with little science content and turn en masse to the liberal arts, the humanities or secretarial services.

Despite divergent interpretations of this phenomenon, surveys conducted tend to show that it is not because of a biological predisposition that males and females acquire a particular type of knowledge, but because of stereotyped social expectations based on sexual differentiation and linked to the economic and cultural roles of males and females in society.

Practically all African countries are affected by this same phenomenon. Certain steps are being taken in some places to find a solution.

A) At the Technical/Vocational Education Level

From the elementary cycle to the higher education level, the system of orientation is also applied based on a student's capacity, without sexual discrimination.

Manual work in school is an integral part of the 6th and 5th forms in middle school (7th and 8th years after pre-school). Students in the 4th and 3rd forms (9th/10th grades) of the same cycle are introduced to technology and economics. The only problem is that these subjects are only found in the Technical Secondary Schools (CEMT/TSS). Plans have been made to generalize such teaching in all the high schools (1st cycle) and colleges.

It must be pointed out that the specific commission for orientating students leaving the middle cycle into technical education, makes no distinction between boys and girls. However, it often honors students' choices. This means that many girls, for lack of information about the various streams of technical education, ask to go into the tertiary sector.

Experience shows that in order to promote girls' access to technical education in general and to industrial technical education in particular, students in 10th and 11th grades must be invited to visit workshops in technical high schools, and allowed to handle the tooling machines, under the watchful eye of the professor supervising the workshop. This visual observation would allow one to pierce the veil of myths surrounding these trades in girls' minds.

B) Didactic Methods

The objective of rethinking teaching methods does not mean merely to rework ways of promoting girls' access to the above-mentioned streams but to correct their poor performance in them.

The objectives and ultimate goals of teaching sciences and technology coordinated from the elementary cycle up to the higher level, and passing through the general and secondary cycle, will henceforth be to engender scientific vocations through a training method which - while ensuring the cultural and social growth of the individual will definitely work for the good of the community by making the best possible contribution to Senegal's economic and social development.

In order to ensure a person's harmonious integration into society, this training must be designed so it can work effectively towards meeting the demands of technological development and progress.

This new methodological approach will consist, moreover of the following:

· to guarantee training which relates school to life, theory to the practical, education to production, and to develop the intellectual capacities and manual agility, while at the same time preparing students for making a smooth transition into professional careers;

· to adapt subject content, objectives and methods to the specific needs of those receiving instruction;

· to establish bridges between the various streams and levels of education, thereby permitting the reorientation desired and deemed legitimate;

· to institute special education for the social integration and reinsertion of victims of various handicaps and social maladjustments;

· to develop in the pupil, and later in the student, a methodological, experimental and scientific way of thinking; and finally,

· to serve as mediator to enable the person being taught to apprehend, understand, interpret and act on his/her technological environment.

INCENTIVE MEASURES FAVOURING EMPLOYMENT (INCLUDING SELF-EMPLOYMENT) IN THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECTORS

In light of the difficulty encountered in incorporating the various streams into active life, educational programmes now have included training for self-employment, as the public sector is no longer obligated to guarantee jobs.

Hence, in order to encourage private initiatives, the Government has, for example, set up the Economic Promotion Fund, which is open to all Senegalese, although the private sector is not recruiting much either, due to the current economic crisis. Faced with these difficulties, women are now encouraged to invest in “economic interest groups,” (GIEs) or cooperatives to work together. Members of these groups pitch in their own money to build up funds, and at the same time solicit various donors to obtain financing which is indispensable for attaining their goals.

A mutual savings and loan association called the African Network for the Support of Women Entrepreneurs (RASEF) has been created to help businesswomen promote their respective activities.

SPECIFIC ACTIVITIES INVOLVING SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION

Science education is mandatory. However, candidates can opt to take exams in science in technology or not for the BFEM (End of Secondary Cycle Examination). It has been recommended that these subjects be made mandatory for the BFEM.

The specialized subjects are introduced early, from the primary cycle, when the child is introduced to scientific knowledge by methodical observation of familiar objects first, and then of physical phenomena and natural chemistry. This training will be repeated and developed at every level in which the student will be obliged to acquire knowledge and know-how. Such empowerment will help him/her grow into an adult capable of working effectively towards building the nation.

The incorporation of health and environmental issues is taken into account and further stressed in Senegal by the initiation in 1993 of the Education to Family Living and Population Issues Project (EVP/EMP) in the primary cycle. Population issues have engendered programmes coordinated around four conceptional areas or frameworks of reference:

1. Population and Family,
2. Population and Health,
3. Population and Migration.

Through this project, students acquire skills related to:

· a capacity for analyzing problems in their environment related to the causes and effects of big families and to helping find solutions to them;

· the capacity to identify the obstacles within the family that block women's advancement;

· the capacity to familiarize themselves with their rights and duties vis-a-vis their parents, and to create the conditions enabling them to guarantee those rights and to fulfill their duties;

· the capacity to learn the connection between the state of health of populations and the socioeconomic development of their country, and to adopt responsible behavior towards health issues so they can improve the quality of living and finally;

· the capacity to learn the causes and effects of the high mortality rate and to assume behavior that will help reduce that rate.

FUTURE STRATEGIES AND PLANS

In the current context with an extremely high student/teacher ratio, it is practically impossible to proceed with solid and practical applications, for theoretical feedback alone is not enough to prove one has received a proper scientific and technical education.

For all scientific and technical disciplines, goals for the acquisition of knowledge must be set and assessed to correspond better to the demands of the labour market.

The following arrangements have recently been implemented in order to solve the problems mentioned:

a) Concerning the Teaching of Physical and Natural Sciences:

1 - Elaboration of an updated table of statistics on the availability of personnel, of special classrooms, and indicating the condition of equipment in order to determine what instruments must be made;

2 - Reinstitution of the Standing Secretariat at the Ministry of National Education to ensure that there is always reflection bearing on scientific and technological education;

3 - Realizing the project to create a Science High School of Excellence;

4 - Improvement of the material conditions of science teachers by establishing special allowances for them;

5 - Creation of a quality control corps in middle and secondary education;

6 - Extension of scientific and technological blocs (BST) to all the regions.

b) Concerning Technical and Vocational Education:

1 - Creation of a national harmonization committee with the actual participation of people from the world of work;

2 - Drafting an organizational chart showing all the possible bridges between the various streams of study;

3 - Preparation of a harmonized school location chart to avoid any disparities in the location and installation of teaching establishments;

4 - Creation of new sections and reinforcement of acquired pedagogical skills;

5 - Creation and rehabilitation of infrastructures and equipment.

CONCLUSION

As part of an extended series of activities initiated by the Joint ILO/UNESCO Programme subsequent to the Jomtien World Conference (1990) specifying firstly, equal access and treatment in training and vocation, and secondly, the elimination of every form of discrimination related to technical and vocational education, this study, having made its observations about various trends and strategies for implementing a veritable policy promoting girls and women in the changing field of STVE, shall risk a few summary concluding remarks:

· Governments must do more to show true political will, in pursuance of the fundamental provisions of Article 96 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (1945), adopted by UNESCO in 1960 and which to date has been ratified by 84 States; it bears on the fight against discrimination in the field of education. These conventions, which so powerfully advocate equal chances and equal treatment among girls and boys, corroborate (as though it were necessary) the concept by which the combat for development, justice, equality and the recognition of human dignity by allowing everyone to dream of labouring his/her furrow in the fields of society and reap its rewards, is certainly a just cause. It is worth leading this combat in order to wipe out illiteracy and poverty, those evils which UNESCO has so rightfully stressed are very active and interdependent of one another.

· The promotion of girls' equal access to scientific and vocational education in Africa is inevitably achieved by expanding little girls' horizons and fighting against social conditioning - for no law currently exists prescribing a change in the arbitrary distribution of functions between men and women.

Sociologist Evelyne Sullerot makes a valid suggestion in her UNESCO study entitled “Changes in the Roles of Men and Women in Europe.” Rather than convince oneself about “the negative, denigrating or restrictive nature of their roles,” women must instead look for ways to “transform those roles into a sentient, organized power.”

APPENDIX

PERCENTAGE OF WOMEN TEACHERS IN TECHNICAL AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION

A sampling of four** African countries yields statistical results varying from 8.59% to 12.7%, and rising to 23.3% and 24% between 1988-89 and 1992-93.

PERCENTAGE OF FEMALE STUDENTS IN TECHNICAL AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION

COUNTRY	1988-89	1990-91	1992-93	1995-96
Senegal	32.35%			41%
Mali		67.4%
Benin		47.4%

Agriculture	12.22 %
Industry	22.92 %	1993-94
Commerce	90.52 %
Home Economics	99.79 %
1992-93 ECICA
Industry	18.57 %
Tertiary	134.97%

1992-93 Technical High School		MALI-BAMAKO
Ind. Tech. (TI)	)	9.73%
Civ. Engineering (TCG)	)	9.73%
Engineering or Electricity?? (TE)	)	9.73%

PERCENTAGE OF FEMALE STUDENTS IN ADVANCED VOCATIONAL EDUCATION,

1995-96
School of Science	11.6%
Science and Technical
(Communications-Technology)	33.19%	Senegal
Agriculture	12.9 %

(** Translator's note: only 3 countries are actually cited)

COUNTRY/TERTIARY	1975%	1980%	1985%	1990%	1992%
Botswana	19	24	30	33	36
Gambia	10	12	15	-	-
Kenya	16	17	20	21	22
Malawi	7	9	16	11	-
Mauritius	20	26	34	37	38
Nigeria	4	4	7	11	9
Tanzania	12	17	17	-	-
Swaziland	22	26	31	-	-
Zimbabwe	13	13	16	15	16

*Countries for which data is available (closest year) without a break in the source series: Data base of the International Labour Office, 1994. In the World Report on Education, 1995, page 62. Editions UNESCO.