Millennium Development Goals: Reducing Gender Disparity through Educational Incentives (Evidences from Sindh-Pakistan)

Abstract

The enrollment of girls and their retention in, basic education is widely accepted amongst policy makers and researchers in Dakar conference on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in early 2000. But it is a fact in less developed countries like Sindh-Pakistan that backward communities still preferred a boy as better investment of the future in comparisons of their girls for education which creates a large gender gap in education sector, served an obstacle to met MDGs and to also harm the national as well as international development agenda. In the province of Sindh over all girls' participation in school about to 35% and in rural Sindh girl's enrollment is less than 25% to date.

The study contributes significantly in the existing body of knowledge on this subject and based on five years data of the program and also concludes that incentive programmes have a direct response on enrollment. It suggests widely  that more incentives can bring more improvement in girl's enrollment,  i.e. distribution of uniforms, shoes, food snakes, free transport facilities, particularly for girls of  unserved communities living in  far-flung areas of the region to achieve universal target of  women literacy/gender development  as given  in MDGs.