3-D_Kube

Goal 3: Gender equality and women empowerment

The group presenting this goal jumped right into a case study involving gender equality in the Central African Republic. Here for the last 100 years, this country has faced many different economic and especially drastic governmental changes. The Central African Republic has a higher ratio of boys to girls that are enrolled in primary and secondary education. The country itself is relatively small, about the size of Texas. It has a population of about four million. The interesting thing that I learned was that the national anthem of the country preaches about things like unity and dignity when women are not given the same rights as men. Here also, daily life is not exactly modern. The typical home is mud brick and activities take place in open spaces near or around these houses. The people that live here believe that there is no need for privacy. The role of women here is basically to cook while the men will do the more physical work. Roadside stands can be found that sell bakery goods. According to the presentation, the government stated issues depict women as undereducated, uninvolved, underrepresented and do not have much say in what happens. This is all believed to have stemmed from lack of education. Primary, secondary and tertiary schools can all be found in the Central African Republic. There is only an estimated one book for every ten kids and teachers are extremely under qualified. There are 20% more boys enrolled in school and those boys have a 20% higher completion rate. There are presently 37 organizations operating in the country that help its citizens in a variety of ways. However, of these 37, only 2 of these are helping the education crisis and only one involves empowering women. The solutions to these problems as outlined by the group include providing more schools, teachers and supplies. A need for collaboration between the solutions and organizations as well as funding and staffing for these organizations is quite evident. The groups main solution to this problem is entitled “Project Unity�. This project outlines a plan that would separate 90 children into 9 school rooms to get a 10:1 teacher to student ratio. They would also hire new advisors whose responsibilities include curriculum enhancement.

Overall, I think that this presentation was good. The group jumped right into a case study and really dug into its issues. They provided a lot of background information and statistics. From there, the group made a conclusion based on the information provided. This conclusion basically stated that the reason behind the gender equality issue is the lack of education. Following this statement, they proposed a solution to the problem that included providing better education for children. I find it interesting that this UN Millennium Development Goal sort “crossed� boundaries and became about education or more specifically Millennium development goal 2.