Pakistani girls seek better education

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By Betsy Pisik

KARACHI, Pakistan | Yasmeen Khan, a mother of three, leaned down over her lesson book with steely concentration.

"I could sit outside, or I can be here and learn to read," she said after attending one of her children's classes. "Of course I will try to learn." Mrs. Khan was not alone. Several other mothers sat in the back of their daughters' classroom, eager to master rudimental literacy.

In the slums far from the manicured lawns of Islamabad, the cultural tumult of Lahore and the bustling commercial center just a half-hour's drive from this cramped neighborhood called Gulistan Colony, life can be unimaginably hard for a woman who cannot read.

She must memorize the dosages of her children's medicine because the labels mean nothing to her. She must be careful from whom she borrows because a $40 loan from the wrong man could cost her a daughter, and she must be very lucky in marriage or she might end up laboring in backbreaking or degrading work.

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Literacy legacy

Pakistan, a country of intense slums, crushing poverty and sometimes oppressive faith, is handicapped by an educational system that even former government ministers don't energetically defend. The state does not have the money to improve schools in poor and crowded areas, nor can it invest in basic technology. Teachers might be only marginally better educated than their students. In Pakistan, culture is also complicit in keeping girls undereducated. Free religious schools, called madrassas, are based on the Koran and often emphasize memorization over reading, writing and arithmetic. Even relatively secular families may opt to send their children to madrassas, where all expenses are covered. In a country where one child in eight is informally employed in brute labor, carpet weaving, domestic service and the like, schooling will necessarily suffer. The eldest girl is frequently required to stay at home to care for the elderly or younger siblings.

A grown woman without an education is like a young woman without a dowry: socially handicapped, with limited options. This is especially true in countries such as Pakistan, where poverty and corruption have severely limited government services.

"Educating girls is such a luxury," said Mehnaz Aziz, director of the Children's Global Network, a consultancy that works with the United Nations and also receives U.S. funding. "Quality education is a privilege here, not a right. If something has to go, it's the girls' education that will go."

Roughly half of Pakistan's 173 million citizens know how to read, according to the CIA World Factbook. Sixty-three percent of the men are literate, compared with only 36 percent of the women.

The gap between male and female literacy ranks Pakistan 127th out of 130 countries surveyed last year by the Switzerland-based World Economic Forum.

The situation here looked more promising a year ago, Ms. Aziz said. That was before a spike in terrorist bombings hurt Pakistan's foreign reputation and internal stability and before the global economic downturn forced the government to turn to the International Monetary Fund for an emergency loan to pay interest on its foreign debts.

Despite pockets of progress, "if you look from a bird's eye view, people are not bothered with girls' education," Ms. Aziz said sadly. "They are more worried about how to feed their family."