There have been few demands as universal as the demand for education. Education has traditionally been seen as a way out of poverty and powerlessness, a means for the individual gaining control over her/his life choices and, recently, as a means of national rejuvenation. In industrialized and developing nations, regardless of their political and economic systems, the hope that education will improve both the individual and the society is widely shared and explains, in large part, the strong demand for in and out of school education at all levels and continuing large expenditures on education despite economic recession.¹

It is no secret that women have been systematically denied educational opportunities equal to those of men. This has been no less true in nations where there is a long tradition of universal primary education as in the United States, Canada and France than it is in countries like Nigeria, Guatemala, and India which have yet to attain universal primary education. It is the case in socialist nations like Poland, Rumania and China as well as in the capitalist nations of Spain, Great Britain and Germany. ²

Since World War II school systems and non-formal adult education programs have undergone unparalleled expansion. Not only have the number of school places grown markedly at the primary level; secondary and higher education has grown even more rapidly as has the diversity of non-formal, adult and extension education programs. This expansion intensified in the past twenty years, coinciding in large part with the United Nations Decade for Women. Has the unparalleled school expansion of the past years benefited women? Has it helped remove the gender-based educational inequality that has characterized, with few exceptions, most countries in the world? This article will address these questions as well as suggest ways in which inequality in women's education might be overcome in the future.

EDUCATIONAL EXPANSION AND WOMEN

Statistics on women's education world-wide are either complete or current; neither are they particularly accurate. Indeed, an indication of the continuing dismal state of women's education relative to men's is the reluctance of many governments to report female versus male enrollment at all levels of schooling and in non-formal educational programs.³ Having said this, the statistics we do have tell us something. More women than ever attend school. Female enrollments have more than tripled since the 1950s, more so in secondary and higher education than in primary education.

Despite these impressive gains, women's access to education is far from being equal to that of men. In countries where primary education is universal, it is in secondary and higher education where the disparities appear and widen with each successive level of education. In higher education, fewer women than men receive and complete their bachelor's degree in Western Europe, Canada, the United States -- in fact in most of the world. There are a few exceptions -- Sweden, Kuwait -- but as a whole, women do not get as much education as do men.

Given the slacking
off of educational
expansion in the
1980's it is unlikely
that women's participation
in education will improve.

In Third World nations of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, school enrollments at the primary and secondary levels are yet to be universal. Overall enrollments have grown over 180 percent since 1960; most of this growth is at the secondary and tertiary level. Women, however, remain a minority: in 1965 they constituted 27 per cent of all enrollments; in 1980 they were 34 percent. Some progress has been made in the number of women attending primary and secondary schools. But this progress is nowhere near achieving equality. Women remain a minority in the schools and there is tremendous variability among and within countries in women's ability to avail themselves of education of any kind. Rural, poor women and girls from poor families still remain uneducated and illiterate.

Given the slacking off of educational expansion in the 1980s it is unlikely that women's participation in education will improve. Since 1970, male enrollments in the formal school system have remained triple that of females. Government commitment, as several studies have now shown, has never been particularly strong in educating girls and women and there are signs that it may weaken further in the current food, debt, and economic crisis. Gender continues to predict strongly whether a child will go to school and how much schooling she or he will receive almost everywhere.