Despite significant gains in recent years, education outcomes for girls in developing countries continue to lag behind those of boys. Adolescence is a particularly critical stage for girls, marked by rapid biological and psychological changes as well as powerful social expectations of how their lives should unfold. For many girls in developing…

The Population Council is building one of the world's largest bodies of research on programs to improve the lives of adolescents, especially girls. For the past two decades, the Council has been identifying best practices, refining the critical elements of girl-centered programs, and using rigorous evidence to help decisionmakers allocate scarce…

The world has a mixed record towards achieving EFA [Education for All] and the MDGs [Millennium Development Goals] in relation to the targets on gender equity in basic education. For researchers and practitioners, this raises the question of which factors influence the processes leading to the improvement of access and quality of girls' education…

About 30 years ago, Betty Friedan published "The Feminine Mystique" and changed the lives of millions of women forever. The education of women, the prime vehicle to bring about change, has passed through many phases. In the late 1960s and the 1970s, many kinds of special programs for women blossomed in colleges and universities, continuing…

A project was undertaken to identify a set of validated, nondiscriminatory admissions criteria for all vocational programs in Missouri's area vocational schools, junior colleges, and comprehensive high schools. Specifically, the criteria were to ensure admissions to a program to all persons without regard to race, color, national origin, sex, or…

This program manual is a distillation of a 5-year, 10-site national experience in the development of a 7-step model for increasing the enrollment of women and girls in education and training that is nontraditional for their sex. It is intended to extend the impact of the Educational Equity Options Project by making the process accessible to…

Women's literacy rates have improved in nearly all countries for which data are available. However, discrimination in access to education starts in early childhood and tends to continue throughout women's lives. Reproductive, productive, and community roles are considered family responsibilities to be assumed by women. Because these activities…

Statistically, Thailand has eliminated gender disparity in access to education. Reasons that four women's conferences made very little impression on education reform could be no significant or overt discrimination against girls' enrollment and employment; education opportunity as more an issue of class (affordability) than gender (culture); and…

Equal opportunities programs in the Member States of the European Community (EC) are based on international law, EC law, and various legal provisions at the national level. Two main types of positive action can be identified among the various initiatives implemented in the different Member States: (1) governmental promotion of positive actions…

Pilot projects to achieve sex equity in vocational programs at the community colleges of Hawaii have existed on an individual campus basis since 1977. The plan contained in this document continues the sex equity efforts of the community colleges and provides a new approach--based on systemwide coordination--to reducing sex bias and stereotyping in…

While girls and women in Laos are not the target of strong discriminatory practices, they are at a higher risk of dropping out of school and never attending school. Specific components have been developed within educational policies and strategies to address needs of and concerns for girls and women. Reasons that girls and women lack access to…

The impact of enlightened policies and incentives designed to increase girls' enrollment and achievement in education has been marginal in Nepal. Ministry of Education (MOE) goals aimed at increasing girls' participation include increasing the enrollment rate, opening early childhood development centers, promoting recruitment of at least one…

This guide is designed to assist administrators in planning and implementing strategies to eliminate sex bias, sex stereotyping, and sex discrimination in occupational education programs in New York State where such exist. Discussed first are the provisions of the Vocational Education Amendments of 1976 and Title IX of the Education Amendments of…

This document is one of three publications designed to establish guidelines for the elimination of sex bias and sex stereotyping and the establishment of sex fairness in vocational education programs in Colorado. As an administrative reference, it provides background material about the problem and a plan of action for correcting it for school and…

The emphasis on achieving sex equity, begun under the Education Amendments of 1976, continues and expands with the Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education Act. As in the 1976 amendments, the states are required to assign one person full-time responsibility for fulfilling mandated functions relative to sex equity. However, the new Act provides the…