Abstract: The Quest for
Gender Equality
in Burkina Faso:
Female Workloads, Education and Empowerment
in Burkina Faso:
Female Workloads, Education and Empowerment
by Scholastique
Kompaoré and Brenda Gael McSweeney
with Jennifer Hilda Frisanco
Introduction
Preface
Only 8.1 %
percent of women over 15 years in Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta)
were literate in 2005, compared to 18.5% of men. The question of why
this inequality remained alongside others, twenty-five years after the
enthusiasm and energy inspired by Upper Volta's multi-faceted UNESCO/UNDP
Project for Equal Access of Women and Girls to Education, was
one that Scholastique Kompaoré and Brenda Gael McSweeney felt challenged
by.
Mrs. Kompaoré,
a sociologist, was the National Coordinator of this initiative from
1972 to 1978 and prior to that participated in carrying out feasibility
studies for the Project. Dr. McSweeney, a development economist, was
in charge of the Project in the Programme portfolio at the United Nations
Development Programme's Ouagadougou Office.
The authors'
documentary research, drawing especially on their field data collected
since the 1970s, did not reveal significant evolution in the percentage
of literate women. On the bright side, they noted significant progress in
women's empowerment in terms of economic autonomy and community voice, and
also solid improvements in girls' education at the primary level which
augur well for the future.
The authors
went back to the Project zones in 2005 to examine the legacy of the
Project and various aspects of women's lives in villages that participated
in the Project. They looked particularly into the impact of workload-lightening
technologies; literacy, income-generating activities and
political voice of women; and access to education for girls. This
paper outlines their conclusions and identifies topics for further investigation
in the quest for gender equality and female empowerment in Burkina Faso.
The Future: Towards Gender Equality and Development
As the authors see it,
the options in terms of education for women and girls remain the same,
and comply with the following principle: to increase the possibilities
of education and facilitate equal access, and to increase women's participation
in development and in its benefits. There are numerous interventions:
seemingly every project, every Ministry has a women’s aspect, and
there are numerous Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) dedicated to
women’s issues. It would be important that these interventions, widespread
and primarily in the large cities and their surroundings, where they
carve out their somewhat exclusive territories, be well coordinated
with combined efforts instead of operating in a somewhat dispersed way.
A Ministry or organization
from which one can obtain full and complete data concerning the spectrum
of interventions and their results would be a positive contribution. The future challenges appear to be
to establish an overall information dissemination system and to capitalize
on the experiences of each sector of intervention, to establish an overview
of what is successfully being done in favor of women’s empowerment
and gender equality, so as to conduct a systematic analysis and provide
directions for moving dramatically forward.
The long path
traveled thus far has brought strong positive results in terms of narrowing
the ‘gender gap’ in primary school enrollments and completion the
primary cycle of schooling, and in terms on women’s growing economic
autonomy and voice in the villages and beyond. The continued priority
and investment of Burkina’s Government and civil society as well as
their development partners directed towards abating women’s workloads
and promoting girls’ education lead one to conclude in an optimistic
mode. As a Burkina proverb states, “Two hands scoop up more
flour.”
http://www.unesco.org/new/en/social-and-human-sciences/themes/human-rights/gender-equality/publications/
