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Chinese
Muslims stress on girls' education
Monday March 07, 2011 09:06:33 AM,
IANS
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Beijing: China's
Muslim Hui community is working against acute poverty and gender
discrimination to focus on keeping all girls of school-going age
in the classroom.
The Hui ethnic minority is descended from Arabic and Persian
merchants who came to China during the 7th century. Though the
majority lives in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region, there are Hui
people all across the country.
Recently released figures show all children of school-going age in
northwest Gansu province were attending primary school and the
attendance rate at junior high schools had reached 95.5 percent.
"This shows girl schooling, a problem that has harassed us for
decades, has been settled to some extent," Ma Yongming, deputy
education chief in the Linxia region, was quoted as saying by
Xinhua.
Linxia, with a population of about two million, is dubbed "China's
Mecca" as more than half of the residents are Muslims.
Until the mid-1990s, only about 60 percent of its girls went to
school. Inadequate education left 80 percent of women aged 15 and
above illiterate.
"While some parents refused to send girls to school because of
poverty, many others believed it was a waste to spend the money on
their daughters, who would be married off into other people's
family and there would be no return on such investment," said Ma.
Boys, however, were often treated differently.
"Parents rarely hesitated to send their sons to school. But some
were reluctant to send daughters to school even if it was for
free," said Tang Yuwen, an official.
To ensure equal access to schooling for all children, the Gansu
provincial education department launched a Sino-British joint
research project in 1999.
It offered scholarship to girls and trained young women to become
school teachers.
In 2006, the Chinese government exempted fees for all primary and
middle school students in underdeveloped regions. Officials in
Linxia took the opportunity to ask parents to register all
children at school.
"School dropouts are reported to the education authority and the
local government will hold their parents responsible," said Ma
Yongming. "We keep visiting these parents until they send their
children back to school."
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