‘Come on girls, let's go to school’: an effort towards gender educational equity in Turkey

Abstract

In many developing countries, women's education has been a highly prominent issue which is not adequately addressed in their education policies. The participation of female populations in education in most of the developing regions of the world has been much lower than the participation of their male counterparts [UNICEF. 2005a. “Report Card on Gender Parity and Primary Education.” www.unicef.org/turkey]. As a developing country, Turkey engaged in fairly vigorous and determined attempts to address the issues regarding women's education [Aydagül, B. 2008. “No Shared Vision for Achieving Education for All: Turkey at Risk.” Prospects 38 (3): 401–407] owing to the support, incentives, and pressure of the international organisations through various conventions in the last decade. The current paper scrutinises one of these attempts, namely, the campaign called ‘Come on girls, let's go to school’ which was initiated by the Ministry of National Education with the support of United Nations Children's Fund and World Bank, and considerably contributed to the increases in girls' enrolment and attendance rates in rural areas and southeast regions of Turkey. This paper utilises the social equity criteria as its conceptual framework drawing from Levin [1978. “The Dilemma of Comprehensive Secondary School Reforms in Western Europe.” Comparative Education Review 22 (3): 434–451] and Stromquist [2011. Educational Equity [Lecture Notes]. College Park: University of Maryland]. The analysis yields that the girls' education campaign in Turkey addresses to varying extents the criteria of accessibility, probability of enrolment, probability of participation, and length of participation, whereas it fails to meet the standard of educational results.

Keywords:

• education policy
• gender disparity
• gender equity
• girls' education

Notes on contributor

Bedrettin Yazan is a doctoral candidate and graduate teaching assistant in the Second Language Education and Culture Program at the University of Maryland. He has worked as an EFL teacher in Turkey. His research interests include educational reforms in Turkey, second language teacher identity, practicum practices of preservice teachers, English as an international language, non-native English speaking teachers, and intelligibility and accent in TESOL.

Notes

1. UNICEF has been active in Turkey since 1951 when our first mission was to deliver free milk to schools. Guided by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the focus of our activities has since evolved into a more holistic approach to child survival, development, and protection. We are working with the Turkish government to ensure that projects and services to benefit children reflect their needs as whole beings whose survival, growth, and psychosocial and cognitive development are intertwined and interdependent.

2. TL stands for Turkish Liras.

3. The results of the campaign stopped being announced after 2007.