by Christina MAcCulloch

Although she probably does not consider herself a child of privilege, Gabriela is already part of an elite, because slightly less than half of all Guatemalan girls do not enroll in elementary school at all. If she perseveres in her studies, Gabriela could join an even more select group: the one out of eight Guatemalan girls who complete sixth grade.

Gabriela's chances are relatively good. Her mother is herself an elementary school graduate, and her father completed high school. Though their home has but a zinc roof, bare cement floors and no running water, Gabriela's parents are determined to keep her in school because they are convinced that education represents her best chance to escape poverty. Gabriela is also lucky because she lives near a city that offers relatively good access to roads, schools and income-generating work for her parents.

But for girls in Guatemala's rural areas, the outlook is much bleaker. Simply walking to and from a distant school each day can challenge a young girl's endurance and threaten her safety. In households where both parents must do full-time agricultural work, school can seem like a questionable luxury. Most girls end up staying home to care for younger siblings, cook and help wherever else they are needed.

The pressures are such that even among girls in rural Guatemala who do enroll in first grade, 66 percent drop out before reaching third grade. And when families feel they can afford to send a child to school, they generally send a boy. In 1991, some 500,000 girls between 7 and 15 were estimated to be missing school in Guatemala, compared to only 300,000 boys. Overall, 60 percent of Guatemalan women are illiterate, and 80 percent of these are from the country's rural indigenous regions, according to official figures compiled early this decade.

Guatemala is hardly alone in this respect. Mayra Buvinic, chief of the IDB's Social Development Division, cites global literacy statistics showing that in 1990, there were only 74 literate women for every 100 literate men worldwide. "The same studies estimated that globally there were 77 million girls between the ages of 6 and 11 who were not attending school, compared to 52 million boys, and that does not take into account repetition, absenteeism and dropout rates that make the gap even wider," says Buvinic.

Although the bias against educating girls has complex social and cultural roots, it is almost universally exacerbated by poverty. The nations of Latin America and the Caribbean are a case in point. In the region's most developed countries and in its largest cities, the education gender gap is either small or nonexistent. But among the tens of millions of Latin Americans who live in acute poverty, even in the richest countries, the problem is pronounced.

HIDDEN COSTS

Societies pay a high price for the failure to educate girls. While investing in boys' education is obviously beneficial, there is evidence that the same investment in female education yields higher returns for society as a whole. Why? Because although both men and women who went to school are more likely to earn better wages and improve a country's productivity, education tends to affect aspects of women's lives that don't apply to men.

Educated women are more likely to obtain prenatal, delivery and postnatal care, which leads to lower rates of infant and maternal mortality. Indeed, a World Bank study of 25 countries found that an increase of one to three years in a mother's schooling reduced infant mortality in the first year of life by 15 percent. Among fathers, the same increase in schooling resulted in only a six percent reduction in infant mortality rates. Likewise, better-educated women in almost all societies wait longer before they get married and tend to have fewer children--two factors that lower the risk of birth-related health problems for both infants and mothers.

The children of women with as little as three to six years of formal education tend to be better nourished, and they are more likely to enroll and stay in school than the children of uneducated mothers. Educated women also tend to be more active and effective participants in local government, particularly in issues involving social services. In short, because of their multiple roles in the marketplace, the community, and the home, educated women can have a higher impact than educated men on the development and well-being of their societies.

NATIONAL CONCERN, LOCAL APPROACHES

In Guatemala, concern about girls' limited access to education has led to a unique effort to confront the problem head-on. Starting in 1991, a diverse group of educators, researchers, business leaders, civic groups, and donor organizations formed what would later become the National Association for Girls' Education. The association immediately began working with the Ministry of Education to develop a girls' education strategy within the ministry's broader program to strengthen elementary education.

In 1992, with support from the United States Agency for International Development and local foundations, the association commissioned a detailed diagnostic study that for the first time showed the extent of the shortfall in girls' education in Guatemala. The study identified the regions and municipalities where the problem was most severe and proposed a plan of action that included outlines of 37 potential projects.

Soon thereafter, the Ministry of Education launched the Girls' Education Program, a multifaceted effort to develop and test practical ways of increasing enrollment and retention of girls through the sixth grade. The program included projects in four broad areas; technical assistance for the Ministry of Education, the National Association for Girls' Education and individual schools working to implement girls' education programs; training for government officials, teachers and parents; conducting original research on the problem of girls' education; and developing motivational books and other didactic materials in Mayan languages for use by rural schoolgirls (see below).

From the outset, the program's organizers realized that a successful intervention would require coordinating the activities of students, parents, teachers, community leaders and high-level government officials who supported the effort. To find effective approaches, the program launched a pilot "Educate Girls Project," that tested different combinations of initiatives such as training teachers, offering scholarships to individual students, forming parents committees and providing supplementary curricula to schools. The project also hired indigenous women to work as education aides to provide special support to schoolgirls and their families.

The pilot project yielded a number of lessons. For example, project leaders discovered that although teachers were generally receptive to new ideas, they needed training on the theory and practice of reaching girls in the classroom, as well as appropriate teaching aids and materials.

Gabriela Núñez, a sociologist who coordinated the pilot project, believes the training sessions were important because they boosted teachers' sense of their importance in the process. "We found it was crucial to reinforce teachers' assessments of their own value as people, because only with a positive self-image can they transmit a sense of self-worth and recognition to their girl students," she says.

The pilot project also found that even modest scholarship grants, amounting to the equivalent of around five U.S. dollars per month, were a very cost-effective way of encouraging attendance because they helped compensate for the loss of a girl's labor around the house. Although scholarships were also found to improve long-term retention, project officials concluded that financial support would have to be complemented by a variety of other strategies to encourage girls to return to school year after year.

Núñez argues that efforts to improve educational opportunities for girls invariably benefit boys as well. "When boys see girls becoming more active in class and in school organizations, they get more involved themselves, because they don't want to be left out." Likewise, parent committees formed as part of the pilot project increased the parents' engagement in the education of all their children, regardless of gender.

Although it is hard to quantify the success of Guatemala's girls' education efforts to date, one fundamental accomplishment is clear. "The need to improve girls' access to education is now understood and considered a priority among policymakers at the national level," says Isabel Nieves, lead author of the Guatemalan diagnostic study and now a social development specialist at the IDB.

This new awareness became evident during the drafting of the 1996 Peace Accords that brought an end to Guatemala's civil war. The accords included specific mandates to end gender inequalities in education, a goal that was also specifically addressed in the Guatemalan government's 1996 2000 action plan. Indeed, that plan set an ambitious target of 80 percent primary school enrollment for girls by the year 2000 as part of educational reform programs.

Now, the IDB is supporting that program through a $15 million loan approved last year for Guatemala's Ministry of Education. The funds will be used to pay for training teachers and supplying schools with bilingual and Spanish-language materials, implementing programs to reduce first grade repetition, consolidating community participation and replicating successful innovations from the Girls' Education Program.

"The IDB support is arriving at a crucial time," says Nieves. "These funds are allowing the Guatemalan government to mainstream many of the lessons learned during the girls' education pilot project into its overall educational reform program."

The IDB is supporting innovative girls' education efforts in other countries as well. In Bolivia, where illiteracy among women averages 67 percent and girls spend only 60 percent as much time in school as boys, a recent educational reform program partly financed by the Bank set out specifically to reduce dropout rates among girls. The program included a variety of incentives, including scholarships and day care centers where girls could drop off younger siblings in order to attend classes.

In Mexico, an IDB-funded program to assist up to three million children in extreme poverty is testing a different approach to easing the child-care duties of school-age children: letting them bring their younger siblings into the classroom. Though it is too early to judge the effectiveness of this concept, the aim is both to keep girls in school and to offer a more stimulating environment to preschool children.

The ultimate success of these kinds of programs depends, of course, on the perseverance of girls like Gabriela González Hernández and the commitment of parents, teachers and community leaders. But as the progress achieved in Guatemala illustrates, governments can help to create an environment where perseverance and commitment can bear fruit in the lives of individual girls.

For more information on education for girls in Guatemala contact Isabel Nieves at (202) 623-1542.

Mayan people in Guatemala's rural communities rarely see themselves depicted in print, but the color illustrations on the flip chart show two girls with unmistakably Mayan facial features and clothing. The pictures accompany a story--narrated by a local teacher--that is also familiar. Marta and Rosa both enroll in a rural school. But while Marta comes back year after year, Rosa drops out after the first grade. Years later, Marta is able to start a business and raise healthy children, while Rosa struggles with poverty, malnutrition and disease.

The story, written and illustrated by Mayan educators, has struck a chord with hundreds of children and parents who have heard it in recent years. Part of a series of educational materials that are among the first ever developed specifically for Mayan girls, the flip chart includes questions and discussion points designed to reinforce the message that "If our daughters study, we all improve." It was developed for the Guatemalan government's girls' education campaign.