17/04/2015
Women Education Status
The constitutional directive to provide free and compulsory education for all children up to the age of 14 years has remained unfulfilled till now. Educational experts admit that this failure is mainly due to the slow progress of education among girls. After 56 years of Independence, there still exists a great disparity between male and female educational status. In 2011 the percentage of educated persons increased to 74 of which male percentage was 83 and female percentage was 66 respectively. Literacy rate among rural women is only 58.8 percentage as per 2011 census. The proportion of women among primary school teacher is mainly due to difficulties that women have to face in serving in rural areas, caused by resistance from their families, the fear of insecurity in villages and lack of physical amenities such as accommodation, schooling, transport and medical facilities.
Female literacy was at a national average of 65.5 % whereas the male literacy was 82.1%. Within the Indian states, Kerala has shown the highest literacy rates of 90.02% whereas Bihar averaged lower than 50% literacy, the lowest in India.
India is the world's largest democracy where billions of people live and almost of half of these are women. So how does women education effect India's development? If girls are not educated, families suffer too. Educated mothers use their knowledge to improve the health of their children and other family members. Their knowledge about health risk protects their families against illness. Child mortality rate is much higher where mothers lack education than in families where mothers are educated. Girls education emerging as one of the top priorities of Indian society "Educating girls is not an option, it is a necessity". We all want to elimilnate gender disparities in education.
Adi Shankaracharya, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, Swami Vivekanand, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru spoke against the inhuman oppression and crimes perpetrated on woman in the name of tradition and warn out religious section. Margaret Cousins, worked hard to elevate the status to create social awareness and to increase legal and constitutional rights of women. Annie Besant, Mutthulakshmi Reddy, Kamla Devi Chattopadhaya, Durga Bai Deskmukh, Sarojini Naidu are the other prominent crusader for equality of women's rights.