Exclusion, Gender and Education: Case Studies from the Developing World

Girls have achieved remarkable increases in primary schooling over the past decade, yet millions are still not in school. In their previous book, Inexcusable Absence, Maureen A. Lewis and Marlaine E. Lockheed reported the startling new finding that nearly threequarters of the girls who are not in school belong to ethnic, religious, linguistic, racial, or other minorities.
In this companion volume, they further analyze the determinants of school enrollment, completion, and learning in seven countries: the highly heterogeneous populations of Laos, China, Pakistan, India, and Guatemala and the homogeneous populations of Bangladesh and Tunisia. The authors find that in ethnically and linguistically diverse populations, minority groups minority girls in particular lag significantly behind the majority population in school attendance, while highly homogeneous populations like Bangladesh and Tunisia have successfully integrated girls into school on a par with boys. By increasing understanding about the major impediments to universal primary education, Exclusion, Gender and Education provides valuable new knowledge to those who are working to bring gender equity to the education systems of poor countries.

Maureen A. Lewis is an adviser to the Human Development vice president of the World Bank and a nonresident fellow at the Center for Global Development, USA. She was formerly chief economist of the Human Development Network of the World Bank.

Marlaine E. Lockheed is a visiting fellow at the Center for Global Development. She served as director for education, ad interim, for the World Bank from 2000 to 2001, and managed units responsible for education strategy and lending in the Middle East and North Africa.