Higher Education of Women and National Development in Asia

Abstract

It is a truism that if half the people in a society have little or no participation in community life or responsible role in its institutions, such a society is not likely to be dynamic and progressive. Thus, in those nations which systematically exclude their women from the cultural and intellectual milieu, not only are the women retarded, but so, eventually, is the whole society. As Chombart de Lauwe has emphasized: Never before has the social status of women raised so many questions throughout the world, and never before has it appeared so clearly that the evolution of social structures is linked up with this question.' Recognizing the relationship of the status of women to national development in the emerging nations, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted two resolutions requesting the member states to study this question and to recommend measures to be incorporated in a long-term United Nations program for the advancement of women.2 Pursuant to these resolutions, the secretary-general called a seminar which was held in Manila, December 6-19, 1966. The seminar was organized by the United Nations in cooperation with the Government of the Philippines, under the program of advisory services in the field of human rights. Participants in the seminar came from countries within the geographical scope of the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE). For two weeks the participants, who included men as well as women, discussed the most urgent needs in their countries and the measures which could be taken by the United Nations to assist in the advancement of women. As the discussions continued, it soon became obvious that the one paramount need overriding everything else was an increase in educational facilities and opportunities for women on all levels, from primary school to the universities. With the exception of Japan, the participants freely ad. mitted that national development was seriously retarded in all areassocial, economic, political and cultural-by the high illiteracy among Asian women and the fact that higher education was available to only a small percentage of them. The lack of adequate educational facilities for males was grimly apparent, too, but the situation for females was much worse.