Female education is a catch-all term for a complex of issues and debates surrounding education (primary education, secondary education, tertiary education and health education in particular) for females. It includes areas of gender equality and access to education, and its connection to the alleviation of poverty. Also involved are the issues of single-sex education and religious education, in that the division of education along gender lines, and religious teachings on education, have been traditionally dominant, and are still highly relevant in contemporary discussion of female education as a global consideration.
While the feminist movement has certainly promoted the importance of the issues attached to female education, discussion is wide-ranging and by no means confined to narrow terms of reference: it includes for example AIDS.
Islamic history
Girls' class in Afghanistan, 2002
Women in Islam played an important role in the foundations of many Islamic educational institutions, such as Fatima al-Fihri's founding of the University of Al Karaouine in 859. This continued through to the Ayyubid dynasty in the 12th and 13th centuries, when 160 mosques and madrasahs were established in Damascus, 26 of which were funded by women through the Waqf (charitable trust or trust law) system. Half of all the royal patrons for these institutions were also women.
According to the Sunni scholar Ibn Asakir in the 12th century, there were opportunities for female education in the medieval Islamic world, writing that women could study, earn ijazahs (academic degrees), and qualify as scholars and teachers. This was especially the case for learned and scholarly families, who wanted to ensure the highest possible education for both their sons and daughters. Ibn Asakir had himself studied under 80 different female teachers in his time. Female education in the Islamic world was inspired by Muhammad's wives: Khadijah, a successful businesswoman, and Aisha, a renowned hadith scholar and military leader. According to a hadith attributed to Muhammad, he praised the women of Medina because of their desire for religious knowledge:
"How splendid were the women of the ansar; shame did not prevent them from becoming learned in the faith."
While it was not common for women to enroll as students in formal classes, it was common for women to attend informal lectures and study sessions at mosques, madrasahs and other public places. While there were no legal restrictions on female education, some men did not approve of this practice, such as Muhammad ibn al-Hajj (d. 1336) who was appalled at the behaviour of some women who informally audited lectures in his time:[5]
European history
Medieval period
In medieval Europe, education for girls and women was at best patchy, and was controversial in the light of pronouncements of some religious authorities.[6] Shulamith Shahar writes[7], of the situation in the nobility, that Among girls there was an almost direct transition from childhood to marriage, with all it entails.
Education was also seen as stratified in the way that society itself was: in authors such as Vincent of Beauvais, the emphasis is on educating the daughters of the nobility for their social position to come.
Early modern period, humanist attitudes
In early modern Europe, the question of female education had become a standard commonplace one, in other words a literary topos for discussion. Around 1405 Leonardo Bruni wrote De studies et letteris[8], addressed to Baptista di Montefeltro, the daughter of Antonio II da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino; it commends the study of Latin, but warns against arithmetic, geometry, astrology and rhetoric. In discussing the classical scholar Isotta Nogarola, however, Lisa Jardine[9] notes that (in the middle of the fifteenth century), ‘Cultivation’ is in order for a noblewoman; formal competence is positively unbecoming. Christine de Pisan's Livre des Trois Vertus is contemporary with Bruni's book, and sets down the things which a lady or baroness living on her estates ought to be able to do[10].
Erasmus wrote at length about education in De pueris instituendis (1529, written two decades before); not mostly concerned with female education[11], in this work he does mention with approbation the trouble Thomas More took with teaching his whole family. In 1523 Juan Luis Vives, a follower of Erasmus, wrote in Latin his De institutione foeminae Christianae, translated for the future Queen Mary of England as Education of a Christian Woman. This is in line with traditional didactic literature, taking a strongly religious direction.
Elizabeth I of England had a strong humanist education, and was praised by her tutor Roger Ascham. She fits the pattern of education for leadership, rather than for the generality of women. Schooling for girls was rare; the assumption was still that education would be brought to the home environment. Comenius was an advocate of formal education for women.
Modern period
The issue of female education in the large, as emancipatory and rational, is broached seriously in the Enlightenment. Mary Wollstonecraft is a writer who dealt with it in those terms.
Actual progress in institutional terms, for secular education of women, began in the West in the nineteenth century, with the founding of colleges offering single-sex education to young women. These appeared in the middle of the century. The Princess: A Medley, a narrative poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson, is a satire of women's education, still a controversial subject in 1848, when Queen's College first opened in London. Emily Davies campaigned for women's education in the 1860s, and founded Girton College in 1869, as did Anne Clough found Newnham College in 1875.
W. S. Gilbert parodied the poem and treated the themes of women's higher education and feminism in general with The Princess in (1870) and Princess Ida in 1883. Once women began to graduate from institutions of higher education, there steadily developed also a stronger academic stream of schooling, and the teacher training of women in larger numbers, principally to provide primary education. Women's access to traditionally all-male institutions took several generations to become complete.
Educational reform
The interrelated themes of barriers to education and employment continued to form the backbone of feminist thought in the nineteenth century, as described, for instance by Harriet Martineau in her 1859 article “Female Industry” in the Edinburgh Journal. The economy was changing but women’s lot was not. Martineau, however, remained a moderate, for practical reasons, and unlike Cobbe, did not support the emerging call for the vote.
Slowly the efforts of women like Davies and the Langham group started to make inroads. Queen’s College (1848) and Bedford College (1849) in London were starting to offer some education to women from 1848, and by 1862 Davies was establishing a committee to persuade the universities to allow women to sit for the recently established (1858) Local Examinations, with partial success (1865). A year later she published “The Higher Education of Women.” She and Leigh Smith founded the first higher educational institution for women, with 5 students, which became Girton College, Cambridge in 1873, followed by Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford in 1879. Bedford had started awarding degrees the previous year. Despite these measurable advances, few could take advantage of them and life for women students was very difficult.
As part of the continuing dialogue between British and American feminists, Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman in the US to graduate in medicine (1849), lectured in Britain with Langham support. They also supported Elizabeth Garrett’s attempts to assail the walls of British medical education against virulent opposition, eventually taking her degree in France. Garrett’s very successful campaign to run for office on the London School Board in 1870 is another example of a how a small band of very determined women were starting to reach positions of influence at the level of local government and public bodies. That was difficult to preview properly according to laws and regulations and still it has not recommended.
Indian history
In 1878, the University of Calcutta became one of the first universities to admit female graduates to its academic degree programmes, before any of the British universities had later done the same. This point was raised during the Ilbert Bill controversy in 1883, when it was being considered whether Indian judges should be given the right to judge British offenders. The role of women featured prominently in the controversy, where English women who opposed the bill argued that Bengali women, who they stereotyped as "ignorant", are neglected by their men, and that Indian men should therefore not be given the right to judge cases involving English women. Bengali women who supported the bill responded by claiming that they were more educated than the English women opposed to the bill, and pointed out that more Indian women had degrees than British women did at the time.
The Catholic tradition
In the Roman Catholic tradition, concern for female education has expressed itself in the foundation of religious orders, with ministries addressing the area. These include the Ursulines (1535) and the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary (1849). A convent education is an education for girls by nuns, within a convent building. This was already being practised in England before 1275, and later become more popular in France during the seventeenth century, and thereafter spread world-wide. Contemporary convent schools are not restricted to Catholic pupils. Students in contemporary convent education may be boys (particularly in India).
Today
In the developed world, women have surpassed men at many levels of education. For example, in the United States in 2005/2006, women earned 62% of Associate's degrees, 58% of Bachelor's degrees, 60% of Master's degrees, and 50% of Doctorates.
References Historical literature
Bathsua Makin (1673), An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen, in Religion, Manners, Arts & Tongues
Anna Julia Cooper (1892), The Higher Education of Women
Alice Zimmern (1898), Renaissance of Girls' Education in England
Thomas Woody (1929), A History of Women's Education in the United States, 2 vols.
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One of the curious anomalies of indian education is that while tertiary and higher education are over-controlled and regulated by government and its agencies such as UGC, AICTE, Medical Council of India etc, the pre-school sector is completely unregulated. Consequently thousands of nurseries and pre-schools for children as young as three years have been started in garages, garden sheds and urban apartments.Though most urban pre-schools — in effect to socialise children from an early age — claim to deliver the Montessori and other play-way pedagogies, they tend to be staffed by under-trained teachers, and the preliminary skills and love of learning which they promise to inculcate in tiny tots is a matter of luck and conjecture. Yet with educator and parent communities becoming increasingly aware of the benefits of pre-school education, and given that it’s completely free of government interference, it’s hardly surprising that education entrepreneurs in India and abroad are entering this sector in a big way. For instance, the Zee Group, a big name in sophisticated wrapping foils, television and the media, has quickly established a nationwide 600-strong chain of Kidzee pre-schools under the franchise model.
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Education is the most important part of our lives. Like Belizaire’s mother said, education is the most important thing in life. In my life, like Belizaire’s mother, I had my father and my mother tell me, that education is the most important. They were telling me that education is something that I am going to keep for the rest of my life whatever happens. Whatever, I am going to do in my life education is the step, which I am going to use. Nowadays, education is like the identity for the people. Education is the thing that separates person between people. I come from Greece, and the educational system there is very difficult compared to other countries. I started school with very good teachers, and that helped me a lot, at the beginning. I had a good base, and I was a pretty good student. The truth is that I didn’t like to read too much. I could understand everything very easy bad I was lazy. Once again, my parents helped me at that part of my life, and put me at the correct path. When I was in junior high school besides my school as a student, I wanted to be a water polo athlete also. At the beginning it was easy to combine these two, but after while, as I was growing things started getting tough. My ambitions were more; I wanted to be a good athlete and a good student. That meant that I had more hours of practice and less hours to study. It wasn’t something easy; I had to wake up five in the morning to go for practice and after that eight o’clock I had to be at school. When school was over, I had to go at my house to eat and study, because six o’clock till eight in the evening I had to go for practice again. At the and of the day I was exhausted, till the next day in which I had to follow the same program. It was a very difficult program to follow. Nevertheless, I had the support of my parents that helped me. When I graduate from high school I had to make a very difficult decision. I had to decide to be a water polo player as a professional, or to continue my studies. I was garbled in thought. I was eighteen years old, and I had to make the most important decision of my life. It was the most important decision, because I had to follow whatever I decide for the rest of my life. I wanted to continue, studying and playing water polo. As a sportsperson, I have seen athletes with great athletic history and career that decided to follow only water polo. After their retirement, it was very disappointing for me because some of them continued their life and they could hardly survive financially. They didn’t work in good places and their lifestyle was much worse since the time they had become athletes. I had some friends as an example for me who achieved both education and sports. I tried to gain information from their experience, and they provided me with valuable advice. Eventually, my decision was to go and study in the United States. It was very difficult decision for me, but I had the chance to study while I was playing water polo and I grabbed that chance. I believe that I did the best for me and my future and that I will be someone at least with good education. 
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