Policy Package 1. Level the Playing Field and the Opportunity for Human Development in Lagging Areas
0.65 if Fayoum’s women of childbearing age had the same level of education as Ismailia’s. The key policy principle for tackling spatial-cum-gender disparities in education is that any intervention aimed at spatial disparities should be made with girls’ distinct needs in mind: • In the Republic of Yemen, the human resource management agenda is gender-specific: the Girls’ Secondary Education Project will subsidize transport costs for woman teachers. • CCT programs can be designed to provide families with special incentives to keep girls in school. In Mexico, grants at the secondary level are higher for girls, to take account of women’s role in passing on human capital to the next generation (Rawlings and Rubio 2005). In the Republic of Yemen, the Girls’ Secondary Education Project plans to increase girls’ retention rates by providing CCTs to families with girls in grades 4 to 12, inclusive. • The spatial planning of public investment in education can reflect girls’ educational needs. Standard distances between schools and residences should take account of social limitations on girls’ mobility. Schools should be provided with adequate water and sanitation, which are a major factor in determining girls’ attendance. Information technology can be used to mitigate limitations on the mobility of female students and teachers. Although the evidence suggests that boys tend to monopolize computers in schools at the expense of girls, there are successful examples of computer-based learning programs specifically targeted at girls and women (Huyer, Hafkin, Ertl, and Dryburgh 2005). The Republic of Yemen’s Girls Secondary Education Project allows the best women teachers to reach out to selected project schools through videoconferencing and e-mail to provide personal instruction. Bringing dropped-out girls back into education may require nontraditional approaches. Field studies report the sense of “sadness, anxiety, boredom, and uselessness” felt by girls who have dropped out of education (Golnar 1995). Complementary programs can be designed to help girls who have dropped out of formal education to return to basic education or skills training. In Bangladesh, the nongovernmental organization (NGO) BRAC pioneered this approach, renting houses, courtyards, and storefronts as improvised schools. It has been suggested that women’s training annexes could be added to primary schools in the Republic of Yemen, which was the practice in France in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The “Bridge School” approach, which has proved successful in India, creates a pathway for girls to transition back into mainstream public education.
165