Reducing the gap: government efforts to advance girls’ education in colonial Cyprus, 1878-1960

Abstract

As was the case in many countries around the world, in Cyprus, up until the first decades of the 20th century, universal – and surely compulsory – education was not a given right but, rather, a privilege. When the British arrived on the island, in 1878, the illiteracy rate exceeded 75 percent while, among the female population, the percentage was a shocking 97.5 percent. During British rule, girls and women were to benefit significantly from the Government’s education decisions; these decisions reduced the gap between boys’ and girls’ school attendance, a tendency that continued after the island’s independence. This paper focuses mostly on the Greek-Cypriot community, although frequent references to the Turkish-Cypriot and other communities are made throughout the text; the entire subject is approached mainly from a historical, rather than an educational, perspective.