hold high and prestigious positions in academia. In the Civil Service, though, they
represent only about 6 per cent of employees.
Although there are enormous disparities in respect of girls' education in India, it is
generally the case that lack of special facilities is often a key factor in enrolment.
Norms that disapprove of co-education lead to the withdrawal of girls, while lack of
safe access constrains participation even when it is condoned. Within this generally
negative scene there are areas of high participation and achievement where several
factors (eg. matriarchy, mission legacies and socialism) come together (eg. Kerala,
Meghalaya and North Punjab). Outside of these areas, the minority of women who have
higher education use it to improve their social position in the present structure without
changing the hierarchical structure itself. They go into the teaching profession in large
numbers because, particularly at the lower levels, this is an extension of their traditional
roles: a convenient combination of domestic and occupational spheres. The majority of
women do not, or cannot, exercise their rights in education and society because social
and structural changes produced by modernization and the egalitarian ideology since
independence have not been accompanied by parallel changes in values and attitudes
towards women.
Pakistan
THE BRITISH COUNCIL (1993) Workshops on Female Access to Primary
Schooling in Pakistan: Programme, Materials and Recommendations, Islamabad.
This report arises from a national workshop convened by The British Council in
collaboration with the Pakistan Ministry of Education and NORAD. It is organised
under a number of sub-heads and sections: general papers; cultural and social
influences on girls participation in primary education; co-education at primary level;
appropriate infrastructures for the fostering of girls' education; the role of NGOs and
the private sector in respect of female education. Overall there are 33 papers in this
report, distributed fairly evenly over the five sections identified above. Of these 33
papers, only four are contributed by outsiders - all from the UK - so that the bulk of the
report is indigenous and derives from the personal experiences and critical observations
of the leading female scholars and professionals of the country itself.
It is not possible to summarise all the papers here, or even the key ones, but it is
possible to identify major themes that are strongly represented or tend to recur. One of
these is the issue of adult education and the significance of maternal literacy. While
progress needs to be made in providing more schooling opportunities for girls, there
must be a parallel effort to promote appropriate forms of literacy for mothers of today's
young children. Ideally, as Fayyaz Bager's paper shows, there needs to be created a
sustainable model for universal female literacy, and that the most crucial factor within