The Status of Female Education in Kenya

This summer, Blue Kitabu is expanding to Kenya, specifically Loita Hills, an area that lacks educational opportunity. The closest school to this village is 15km away. We plan to support the school with a corn mill and other small businesses and once open, the school will provide 50 children with an education which they would otherwise not receive.

Female education is a catalytic tool for promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment. Current trends of female primary education in Kenya are progressing towards equality, and the statistics for Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi are extremely similar. Gender equality in primary schooling in Kenya and its neighboring countries is extremely feasible for the future if current trends continue.

According to Joni Seager’s Penguin Atlas of Women in the World, over 95% of girls are enrolled in primary school as of 2005 in Kenya, Tanzania, and Rwanda. Compared to Central and West Africa, these rates are very high. However, enrollment does not necessarily ensure attendance. In Kenya, the percentage of girls enrolled in primary school who make it to grade five, 85.1%, is greater than for boys, which is 80.9%. Only in Kenya’s poorest areas is there a gender disparity between male and female attendance in primary school. Muhuru Bay, located in Kenya’s poorest province, Nyanza, is an example of an underprivileged area and it has the highest incidence of malaria and HIV infection in the country. Non-profits such as the Women’s Institute for Secondary Education and Research (WISER) are working in areas like Muhuru Bay to provide girls with educational opportunities. UNICEF’s projections to 2015 show the expectation that the primary net attendance rate for girls is predicted to keep rising to 90% in 2015. In Kenya, girls make up 47.6% of high school students, so the ratio of girls to boys in secondary school is almost equal. The rate of survival to the last grade, which has risen to above 75% of all secondary students, is the nearly same for girls and boys.

The school that Blue Kitabu is building in Loita Hills will benefit both female and male students and will further contribute to the encouraging status of female education in Kenya!

A recent NY Times article cited a Save The Children's report, which names Norway as the best place to be a mother and Afghanistan as the worst out of 160 countries, including 43 developed nations and 117 developing ones. Both the NY Times and Save The Children highlight the importance of trained healthcare professionals present during childbirth, and notes that in very poor countries, survival of both mother and child is contingent on whether or not there is a trained female healthcare worker present during the birth. In many of these countries, husbands prevent their wives from seeing male doctors, and without the presence of any trained healthcare worker, the probability of mortality for both mother and child increases significantly. Without the presence of a male doctor, trained female midwives, nurses and doctors can play a crucial role in decreasing maternal and infant mortality rates.

In order for women in developing countries to participate in fields such as healthcare, education is a necessary component. However, in many of these lower income countries, female education is just not a priority. Many communities do not see the value in education, especially if their communities are labor intensive and require the manual labor of all members of the family. But education, as seen from the above article, can be the key in significantly decreasing maternal mortality, which remains one of the most staggering collection of statistics in international health today.

Many people and organizations worldwide are beginning to recognize the importance of women as contributors to society:

-One NY Times blogger, Nicholas D. Kristof, has written several articles about the situation of women all over the world.
-Studies have been done that show how female education improves maternal health.
-Organizations such as Build A Nest worldwide, Rencontre et Action in Niger and others focus on involving women in economic activity separate from their husbands so that they too have a say in economic life for their families.

We can also support these women by recognizing the importance of female education in our own societies by looking at what is working and what we can improve. Supporting organizations such as the ones above that focus specifically on women is a great way to become involved in the lives of women all over the world. Women can and should be an important part of society and this realization is crucial if countries want to fully develop in all aspects of society. Once, when asked if Saudi Arabia would reach one of the top 10 countries in the world in technology by 2010, Bill Gates replied to an audience that was 4/5 men and 1/5 women: "Well, if you’re not fully utilizing half the talent in the country, you’re not going to get too close to the Top 10".