National Women’s Education Center of Japan

Workshop on Gender and Education: Life-long Learning for Women’s Empowerment
(Women’s empowerment through Life-long Learning)

Office of Research and International Affairs organized a workshop on Gender and Education as part of capacity building of NWEC staff on January 19, 2012.
The lecture given by Koto Kanno, NWEC Visiting Fellow, started with confirming the definition of terms such as gender equality, equity and parity. Gender Equality in Education, which represents the qualitative experiences in education should be distinguished from parity, i.e., numerical/quantitative progress indicators, and also from equity, the redistributive policy approach. The gender equality in education should not be measured only through access, such as enrolment ratio, but it should also cover education process, outcomes as well as outcome. The lecture then discusses the paradigm shift from girls/women’s education to Gender in education, referring to the changes in approach and emphasis in Jomtien EFA declaration (1990) and Dakar EFA Framework for Action(2000). Based on lessons learnt since Jomtien, and considering the slow progress in Girls’ Education and female literacy, Dakar EFA Framework for Action stresses the need for integrated strategies for gender equality in education and recognizes the need for changes in attitudes, values and practices. Moreover, referring to the experiences in Nepal, Ms Kanno discussed women’s empowerment through education and literacy. Empowerment through literacy gives rise to self-respect, confidence and dignity of women, widens their life-choices, and opens their future perspective. Ms Kanno also introduced the scale-up strategy of good practices of girls’ education, so that successful experiences be not only expanded widely at the country level, but also reflected to the national level educational plan and development strategy. Finally, the workshop discussed the Japanese situation, where gender parity achieved at the primary and secondary education levels, does not necessarily correspond with the progress of gender parity and equality in higher education and in society at large.