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UNICEF: Indonesian Women need greater Access to Higher Education


Thursday January 25, 2007
Launching Unicef 2007 Report on the State of the World’s Children, Gianfranco Rotiglioni, UNICEF Representative to Indonesia recently urged the government to continue efforts to advance gender equality. The most important issues to improve gender equality are greater access for women to higher education and to economic opportunities, improved reproductive healthcare, and the eradication of root causes to sexual exploitation. “Interventions in these areas will bring practical benefits to women and society” said Gianfranco.
 
Barriers to achieving gender equality in education in Indonesia include early marriages, gender-biased textbooks, gender stereotyping, and unreliable data. Rotiglioni warned that women and girls in Indonesia would remain vulnerable to sexual exploitation and trafficking if programs were not carried out to address the problems of poverty, poor education and the inability to make a good living, reports the Jakarta Post. 
"This feeds back into access to education. If we can ensure that children, especially girls, attend schools, they will later be better able to support themselves and become less vulnerable to traffickers and exploiters," he said.
Rotiglioni said Indonesia had achieved overall good progress toward gender parity in net enrollment at the primary and junior high school levels. However, access to education for girls becomes increasingly limited as they go on to higher levels of study.
The Unicef report finds that empowering women and eliminating discrimination produces a positive impact on the survival and well-being of children.
It also says that when women are empowered, children and families prosper, because empowered women have a bigger influence over key decisions that can improve their lives.
In her opening speech to the launch, Minister for the Empowerment of Women, Meutia Hatta Swasono, said that elimination of gender discrimination and the empowerment of Indonesian women will benefit positively both the women as well as improve their children’s welfare, since healthy and educated women who are empowered, will raise healthy, educated and confident children, reports Kompas daily.