As long as there are fewer opportunities for women than men to use their education in the workforce to gain income, daughters' education will correctly be perceived by parents as less valuable in the long run than their sons'. This will mean that girls, regardless of the opportunities that are made available through the opening of programs and school places, will continue to be denied as much education as boys. Parents, faced with hard economic decisions, often realistically conclude that their daughters are not worth educating.

If women are to receive an education equal to that of men, then the rewards, in economic terms that follow from an education must be made available to women. Achieving educational equality is strongly related to economic and social policies, not only educational policies. Governments in the past decades have approached the issue of gender-based inequalities in the work-place and in the society as a question best addressed by reforms in education. We have learned from the experiences of the 1960s and 1970s that achieving equality in education also involves reforms in economic structures and in social policy. Most of all, it involves the removal of discriminatory hiring and wage practices that keep women in low-paying sex-segregated occupations.

...reforms in economic
and social structures
will also become a precondition
for women obtaining
educational equality.

Not only will achieving equity in education be a question of reforming economic and social structures, it is also a question of addressing the ways in which girls and women are socialized. We need to be more concerned about the cultural messages that prevent females from taking opportunities provided them in education and in the occupational structure. We are beginning to understand that women do not choose to remain in school or enter non-traditional fields in large part because of attitudes they and others around them hold about sex appropriate roles.

Girls' attitudes toward their education, as well as boys' toward girls and their prospective roles, are shaped by media, advertisement and the culture which deny women's claim to equality with men. This socialization effect is powerful, so much so that even when structural barriers are removed, females are reluctant to enter fields such as science, technology, and administration, which are identified as male domains. For educational equality to become a reality, education needs to be reformed, but so also do society and its cultural norms about appropriate sex roles.

1. See, for example Coombs, The World Crisis in Education: The View.. from the Eighties (New York, Oxford University Press, 1985).
   
2. For reviews of women's .enrollment patterns. see Isabelle. Deble, The School Education of Girls (Paris: UNESOO, 1980), Mary Jean Gowman. and C. Arnold Anderson, "The. Participation of Women in Education in the Third World," in G. P. Kelly and C. Elliott, Women's Education In The Third World, Comparative Perspective (Albany' SUNY Press, 19.2) pp. 1130.
3. See Deble, op cit.
   
4. This discussion of educational enrollment pat tarns is based on Deble, op cit; Coombs, op cit: chapter 7; Anderson and Bowman op cit.; and G. P. Kelly, 'Women's Access to Education in the Third World, "Myths and Realities," in Sandra Ackerr et et al. (eds.), World Yearbook of Education 1984 Women in Education (New York, Kogan Page, 1984) pp. 81-8.9.
   
5. See Deble, op cit.; Coombs op cit. and Marie Thourson Jones "Educating Girls in Tunisia: Issues. Generated by the Drive for Universal Enrollment," in Kelly and Elliott, op cit., pp. 31-50.
   
6. See Jeremy. D.Finn, L. Dulberg, and J. Reis., "Sex Difference' in Educational Attainment: A Cross...National perspective, "Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 49 (1979) pp. 477-503, Gillian Blunden, "Vocational Education for Women in England and Wales," in Acker, op cit, pp. 153-62, Rosemary Deem, Schooling for Women's Work (London, Routledae and Kegan paul, 1980); Audrey Smock, Women's Education in Developing Countries: Opportunities and outcomes (New York: praeger, 1901).
   
7. See especially, Barbara Roger , The Domestication of Women (London .and New York.., Tavistock, 1980).
   
8. An excellent study that how this is Brenda Gael Mcsweeney and Merion Freedom, "Lack of Time as an obstacle to Women's Education: the Case of Upper Volta," in Kelly and Elliott, op cit. 88-103. See also Gail Lapidus, Women in Soviet Society(Barkeley: University of California Press, 1980).
   
9. See Blanche Fitzapatrick, women's Inferior Education: An Economic Analysis (New York: Praeger, 1979); Pamela Roby, "Structural and Intornational Barriers to Women in Higher Education," in Safilior- Rothschild, Toward a Sociology of women ( New York:1987) pp, 121-41: Walter R. Allen, "Family Roles, Occupational Statuses and Achievement Orientations Among Black women in the United States" Signs, vol. 4, N0.4 (Summer 1987) pp. 670-86
   
10. See Smock, op cit.; Rati Ram, "Sex differences in the Labor Market Outcomes of Education," in Kelly and Elliot, op cit, pp. 2203-227.
    
11. See for example, Katherine Clarricoates, " The Importance of Being Ernest…Emma Tom…Jane. The perception and Categorization of Gender Conformity and Gender Deviation in primary Schools," in Deem, op cit., pp 26-41; Terry D. Evanss, Being and becoming: Teacher Perceptions of Sex Roles and Actions Toward Male and Female pupils, "British Journals of Sociologh of Education, Vol.3, No.2 (1982) pp. 127-42; Georgia Sassen, " Success Anxiety in Women: A constructivist Interpretatiion of sources and Its Significance "Harvard Educational Review, vol. 50, N0 1 (1980) pp. 13-24

Dr. Gail Kelly is a Professor in
the Department of Educational Organization,
Administration and
Policy at the State University
of New York in Buffalo.