Govt plans to reduce female illiteracy

Govt plans to reduce female illiteracy

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Confronting the fact that illiteracy in women is two times higher
than that in men, the Office of the State Minister for Women's
Empowerment, the Ministry of National Education and the Ministry
of Home Affairs signed on Thursday a joint decree spelling out
their commitment to halving the rate by 2009.

The education ministry reported that in 2003, the illiteracy
rate in women aged above 15 years old reached 13.84 percent,
compared to 6.52 percent in men.

"Illiteracy has caused women to be ignorant of current issues,
making them prone to deceit and therefore hampers the development
of their role as mothers," State Minister for Women's Empowerment
Meutia Hatta Swasono said on the national meeting for Gender
Mainstreaming on Education here.

In his speech, Minister of National Education Bambang Sudibyo
said that bringing down illiteracy rate in women would have a
great impact to the country's efforts to curb the nation's
overall illiteracy rate, and in turn help the country meet the
Millennium Development Goals.

According to the joint decree, the state minister of women's
empowerment office will be responsible for running campaigns and
advocacy, developing models and infrastructure as well as
reporting the progress of the program to the President annually.

Meanwhile, the education ministry will take part in developing
human resources, teaching modules and curriculum.

Since the action plans would be carried out by local
administrations, the home affairs ministry will supervise the
implementation and evaluate progress made by each province.

The illiteracy eradication program will be integrated into
non-formal education such as internships, community learning
groups, community libraries as well as community life-skills
studies.

The mapping and analysis of gender problems in the country was
initiated by the education ministry's directorate general for
out-of-school education and youth in 2001. The directorate
general distributed guidelines for local agencies and asked them
to follow suit.

"The implementation could be in the form of giving
scholarships to female students prone to drop-out, bigger quotas
for female students and reaching out to illiterate productive-
aged, out-of-school women," the director general, Fasli Jalal,
said.

Jalal said that the government would only provide partial
funding in the form of block grants, but the action plans would
be developed locally to address specific problems facing each
province. Local administrations must also set aside funds from
local budgets according to their planned projects, he added.
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