Girls in Yemen face serious obstacles on the path to education, but one way to increase the number of girls in school is to provide them with female teachers.
The World Bank’s Basic Education Development Program (2004-2012) has shown that recruiting and retaining more female teachers, particularly in rural areas, has a positive impact on the number of girls who attend and complete school. The second phase of the program launched in 2013.
Yemen has a wide gender gap in school completion rates, and only half of girls finish primary school. The gender gap exists for teachers as well, with only 28% of teachers being female. This poses a barrier to education, according to the World Bank, when “traditionally-minded male family members will not allow daughters, sisters or nieces to be taught by men.”
An estimated 4500 more female teachers are needed to rectify the disparity, and organizations like the Global Partnership for Education and the World Bank have been working to address the shortage. Both conduct teacher training and certification programs that have produced over 1000 female teachers since 2007.
In addition to these projects, methods like awareness programs and conditional cash transfers target rural families to encourage them to send their daughters to school. The cash transfers are contingent upon a female student’s good attendance, with a bonus for good grades.
Despite these improvements, girls in Yemen face other cultural barriers against education. Yemen has a particularly high rate of child marriage, with 14 percent of Yemeni girls married before age 15, and half married by age 18. In some cases girls as young as eight are married to much older men. On top of the many negative health and emotional effects of child marriage, girls typically leave school when they marry.
Creative Commons Love: World Bank Photo Collection on Flickr.com
Written by Carla Drumhiller Smith