Chen Wenjiang, vice president of the Philosophy and Social
Science Institute of the Lanzhou University, said on Tuesday that
low economic and social development in western regions holds the
key to local women’s educational level, with gender equality also
to be considered.
The discrepancy in the education levels of men and women between
urban and rural areas is striking, particularly in western regions,
said Prof. Chen, speaking at the Female Education and Gender
Equality Forum, one of four parallel forums of the Third
Cross-Straits Women Development Seminar which was held from
September 19-20 in Beijing.
Chen’s conclusions drew from “Monitoring and
Researching Western China’s Social and Economic Development”, a
project organized by the Ministry of Science and Technology’s
National Research Center for Development, conducted from July 2004
to February 2005 with financial aid given by the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs of Norway.
The project showed that a quarter of rural residents over 7 had
never received formal education, while this figure dropped to 6.4
percent in urban areas. Moreover, 23.3 percent of rural males under
20 had dropped out from school, as opposed to 24.3 percent of
females.
It is the economic development level and educational resources
conditions that fundamentally affect the educational levels of
people living in urban and rural areas, Chen said. These regions’
low economic levels and lack of access to educational resources
create negative environments for residents to persevere in school,
Chen added.
“But this point, in respect of the women, means that their
actual situation in receiving education is consequences of
dual-effects – a low gender position and regional underdevelopment.
As an under-representative group in the comparatively backward
regions, the women become inexorably the first victim in receiving
the abjectly limited educational resources. For instance, if a pair
of impoverished rural couple can only support only one of their
children to go to school, they definitely will choose the boy
instead of his elder or younger sister. We have seen many cases
like this in our research,” said Chen, who is also assessing expert
in the national social science foundation and legislation advisor
of the Gansu Provincial People’s Congress’s Standing Committee, and
responsible for the study of that project in
Gansu,
Qinghai provinces and
Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.
For this reason, the removal of the educational gender
discrepancy is to ramp up poverty relief, to wipe out all elements
contributing to the widening educational and social gap between
eastern and western China, Prof. Chen highlighted.
Eleven scholars and experts from mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong and
Macao presented their speeches at the forum on Tuesday, sharing
views and experiences on the fields of female education and gender
equality.
(China.org.cn by staff reporter Zhang Tingting, September 20,
2006)