Women in Education sector: Monitoring and Evaluation of the Impact of Education Policies on Women Empowerment

Abstract

One of the perspectives of delving women in academia is by using Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) goal 4 ‘Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’, to measure the SDG number 5, ‘Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls’ - and the vice versa. The extent of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) realization provides lessons that the current and future education policies and programs are/ will be founded on. To achieve a thorough analysis, consistently accurate and relevant data is requisite and essential to monitoring and evaluating the real effects of education policies on women empowerment. At a glance, the average children enrolment in primary education rose remarkably between 2000-2015 in most developing countries indicating the extent of achievement of MDGs. Shifting from these quantitative evaluation results, this study outlines qualitative perspectives of measuring women in leadership in the education sector as an approach of empowerment. A key concern is how the generation of data through monitoring and evaluation enables fast-tracking of the effects of the policies on women empowerment in the education system. In this article, we focus on three school management variables as measures of women empowerment: 1) the nature of both internal and external audits to ensure accountability and transparency; 2) professionalism enhancement (nature of the In-service education training), and 3) the analysis of resource needs in empowering women. While doing the monitoring and evaluation of SDGs achievement, there is a need to deepen the analysis and consider the processes that determine which gender elevates to leadership.