Elementary Education in Punjab: Profiling the Gender Gap

The prejudices and biases against the girl child in India are so deep-rooted and complex that it is difficult for any government to overcome them unless the community and its people work hand in hand. Poverty, misconceptions, negative attitudes of parents is among many reasons that accentuate the problems of the girl child. Social evils like bride price and dowry system are some of the major impediments in the education of the girls. There are parents who still believe that with higher education of girls, the bride price and expanses on dowry also goes up. Such parents fail to take into account that the education, sometimes, lowers the dowry for a girl because the husband's family views education of their bride as an asset. Many parents are reluctant even to allow their daughter to travel to schools and be taught by male teachers and have close contact with boys. The present paper is based on a study carried out by the author to explore the gender issues in elementary education in Punjab. Gender disparity in relation to enrolment and achievement levels of the students was also evident in the sampled students studying in the primary and upper primary schools situated both in the urban as well as rural areas of the state. During the survey, a general belief prevailed among the most households that privately run schools are better than the government schools and, therefore, most of these parents preferred private schools for male children while government schools for the female children. The data on enrolment also revealed that there is gender discrimination in enrolling children to schools. There is clear-cut gap in the rate of the enrolment of girls than that of boys. However, it was refreshing to note that the academic performance of girls, by and large, was better than the boys both at the primary as well as at the upper primary levels.