RESPECT for Women seminar - Anna Ciccarelli

Global Perspectives Panel

Presentation by Dr Anna Ciccarelli, Executive Director, International and Development, University of South Australia

Theme on the transformative power of education for girls, women, their families and communities

Nexus between Education and Poverty in developing countries

• Women are poorer than men because they are often denied equal rights and opportunities, they also carry the burden of reproductive and care work and represent the majority of unpaid labour; hence greater vulnerability of women to chronic poverty.
• Seven out of ten of the world's hungry are women and girls.
• In one in three households around the world, women are the sole breadwinners.
• Although it is often stated that labour is the poor’s most abundant asset, women are relatively time poor and much of their work is socially unrecognized since it is unpaid. Thus, women on average work more, but have less command over income as well as assets.
• Concept of increased time poverty, gender relations and inequalities cause women and men to experience poverty differently within households.

Education and Training of Women as a factor in economic development

• In countries where there is significant under-representation of primary or secondary enrolment, GNP per capita is roughly 25 per cent lower than elsewhere.
• An estimated two thirds of the 300 million children without access to education are girls, and two thirds of the some 880 million illiterate adults are women.
• Education, in particular that of women, has a larger impact on infant and child mortality than the combined effects of higher income, improved sanitation and modern-sector employment.
• Botswana, Kenya and Zimbabwe, with the highest levels of female schooling in sub-Saharan Africa, show the lowest levels of child mortality.
• One study on agricultural productivity showed that four years of primary education increased farmers' productivity by up to 10 percent. A World Bank study concluded that if women received the same amount of education as men, farm yields would rise by between 7 and 22 percent.

International education as a force for cultural change

• Participation of women in international education is growing
• Women take up the opportunity to explore options in terms of gender roles and cultural change
• Motivation of young women vis a vis men in cultural exchange programs
• Insufficient preparation for re-entry and return to their families, cultures lack of acceptance of changes in roles, perspectives and career aspirations, workforce participation, marriage etc

Senior Women in University cultures

• Improved participation of women in the top three levels in a study of the ATN universities however, achievement is fragile
• Issue of engagement of younger women in climbing the career ladder
• Research highlighted themes of:

  Reticence

  • Women still don’t put themselves forward
  • It is critical for male and female managers to identify and encourage women to apply for promotion
  • Recent migrants or bicultural women are not participating at the same levels

  Resistance

  • Work/ life balance
  • Questioning around what it takes to be ‘successful’

(Chesterman, Ross, Smith, Peters 03)