Question

Write an essay discussing gender discrimination found in education within the Caribbean region. 500 words.

Answer 1

• Gender dynamics in education in the English-speaking Caribbean have undergone significant shifts in recent years. On the one hand, educational access, retention and attainment by girls have improved significantly and should be celebrated as key success stories. On the other hand, retention, completion and attainment by boys appear to be slipping.
• The Latin American and Caribbean region have inequalities in education.The region has substantial work ahead to make school, especially at the secondary level, attractive and welcoming to boys and young men, but the interconnected inequality of girls and women also cannot be downplayed. The challenge in Latin America and the Caribbean is to translate girls’ education into female empowerment – economically, socially and politically.
• Building a strong and resilient Caribbean demands the equal involvement of women and men. The Caribbean has made significant progress in gender equality in recent years, particularly in women’s education and their participation in the labor force. But more remains to be done to push the frontier to equal opportunity.
• In Latin America and the Caribbean, the participation of women in the labor force rose by 33 percent between 1990 and 2014, which contrasts sharply with the global trend of a slight decline. This increased labor force participation has helped reduce extreme poverty in the region. In Haiti, 63 percent of women participate in the labor force, higher than the regional average. However, on average, women in Haiti earn 30 percent less than men.
• Latin America and the Caribbean has the second-highest rate of female entrepreneurship in the world: 40 percent of firms have female participation in ownership. The highest rates in the region are found in Caribbean countries, including St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and in Grenada.
• In Jamaica, 78 percent of women have accounts at a formal financial institution, the highest number in the region. However, women entrepreneurs tend to be concentrated in small- and medium-sized enterprises, partly due to gender-based inequalities in ownership of land and capital.
• Over the last 30 years, more women than men get an education in many countries, and female enrollment in education in the Caribbean has steadily improved to reach 94 percent. Girls also tend to outperform boys in standardized tests. However, high levels of teenage pregnancy and a low quality of education have become the main causes of school dropout.
• The Dominican Republic’s government recently passed a National Pact for Education which prioritizes learning and improvements in the quality of education. The World Bank is supporting this reform by helping recruit and train primary and secondary school teachers, assess student learning and early childhood development services, and decentralize public school management.
• No country can achieve its potential until all of its citizens are able to achieve theirs.