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. (003)