Nepal: Role of Teachers in Promoting Gender Equality in South Asia

Dev Raj Dahal

Head, FES Nepal Office

The Framework

Education’s supreme aim is to provide human beings knowledge and values to shape productive and peaceful lives. Women’s eternal aspiration for peaceful society goes beyond “rights discourse” to capture the domain of enlightenment and emancipation. Education and culture are linked to society and working life. The liberal separation of the public and the private sphere has now been falsified as the state has entered into family in cases of denial of rights, domestic violence, child abuse and even suicide. The emergence of knowledge and information society has also removed the tradeoff between education and technology as their synthesis has become critical to effective participation in the political economy. New social stratification followed by scientific and technological change and the changing nature of jobs demand professional development of teachers to respond to unfolding life-choices.

In South Asia, statistical improvement on education, particularly of girl education, is fostering gender equality and the equality of people irrespective of their distinctions. Positive transformation has come from women as gender equality involved a cycle of change from personhood, family, society, public institutions to intra-state and post-national public spheres. The vision, determination and leadership of women leaders have made vital impact on the welfare, political agency and lives of both men and women in South Asia. Education, income and engagement are the keys to the gender equalization within and across the countries. They are also passports to economic security, identity, voice and representation. Learning to grow in an age of multiple transitions requires women’s overall knowledge, skills and leadership to cope with transformation underway and reap benefit from it.

New education theories situate women within the social, economic and political context of life-world and deem them critical masses of social transformation within the political system. Teaching and learning centers and teachers’ unions should, therefore, espouse hermeneutical and emancipatory visions, not only to strategic interests to upscale one’s own mobility to elite politics and serve the interest of ruling regimes. This alternative vision of learning for equal and dignified citizenship for women and men rests on critical awareness about existential condition and evolve cognition, disposition, values and attitudes necessary for communicative competence in society and rational construction of justice and peace.

The teachers of South Asia hold hopes for meeting international educational comparison, a hope that remains partially realized owing to structural and cultural barriers arising out of social, economic, political, legal and institutional conditions. These are also the barriers to girl child education and women’s empowerment. Building the solidarity of teachers unions with trade union skills can equip them with necessary energy to influence educational policies of respective governments, build confidence of their members and create a coalition with civil society for collective action. An integrated South Asia can not be created by free play of market forces alone, wider participation of citizens including teachers’ unions and women would be necessary to plan for social, gender and inter-generational justice. This is where the promise of MDGs and the South Asian Social Charter holds. But both suffer from under-achievements, not because of poor economic resources but because of a lack of political will of leaders. Brain drain, massive capital flight, corruption, trafficking of women and weak implementation of rights and policies are the major distortions for social development. Capital flight has been partially compensated by the remittance the migrant workers bring in the region. There are, however, no mechanisms for compensating the loss of skilled persons and their lack of accountability to the society of their birth. Low risk of arrest, light penalty and even impunity do not deter human trafficking to overcome a battle between market efficiency and social justice. The enforcement of SAARC Convention on Combating and Preventing of Trafficking in Women and Children too requires a strong regional political will.

Solution

One solution of gender inequality is the democratization of education by making it accessible at all levels of society. The other is making education for life skills and choices than degree-based and status bound for the maintenance of elite culture. Still, the other is the distributional reach of education among geographic regions, social and economic classes and gender to build positive impact of women’s ideas, institutions and leadership. It is difficult to achieve these strategies unless states of the region are consolidated by building their capacity to implement constitutional and human rights commitments, UN Convention on the CEDAW, ILO Core Labor Standards, national social security policies, etc. All the South Asian countries are signatories of these documents but the level of implementation and monitoring is highly skewed. Effective campaign, advocacy and lobbying are needed from SAARC Women’s Network and civil society for linking these rights to actionable public policies and attaining MDGs and 6 goals of Education For All (EFA) for gender parity.

The transformative leaders emerging from women’s organizations have to continuously infuse the lived experience of their struggle into the public sphere and seek to make them part of national priorities for action. Women can achieve this if educational reforms critically engage them with the state, public institutions and international society in unveiling the “taproots of conflict” and applying remedial measures by using teachers’ unions as a spring for collective action. Problem-solving education need to shift from the currently dominant discourse to a discourse on reflection and care to life-world and make room for an effective and appropriate for national and cosmopolitan citizenship. It is, therefore, important to foster inter-movement solidarity of all the global unions to shape the forces of market-driven globalization in favor of a legitimate social contract and overcome democratic shortfall created by neo-liberal temptation to turn education into “economic model” producing two kinds of citizenship defined by wealth. This system and gender discriminatory laws thwart justice for poor women and children. South Asia is fit to resolve its cruel paradox: the greatest concentration of the world’ poor and biggest pool of scientific personnel and natural resources provided its leaders are accountable to producing suitable public policies necessary for democratic equity for citizens.

Teachers’ Union Roles:

The general functions of teachers’ unions worldwide are: defending teachers rights and jobs, securing improvements in working conditions, including working hours and health safety at work, improving pay and other benefits, including holiday entitlements, encouraging governments to increase teachers’ participation in decision making, improving sick pay, pensions and injury benefits, and developing and protecting the skills of union members enabling them to compete in the changing nature of political economy. Working conditions are also linked to curriculum, books and the teachers’ skills to keep abreast with new developments.

In this context, stronger union movement is not a matter of choice; it is a necessity to realize the vision of teachers for a better life, liberty and dignity. It is also a necessity to foster gender, social and inter-generational justice in the life of the union. But the notion of solidarity—the social power of teachers’ unions—is a lynchpin to shape true democracy in the life of each individual member, union, nation, region and the globe and influence vital decisions and actions pertaining to the universal values they esteem the most.

Note: Speech made at the regional meeting of Educational International, Kathmandu

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