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Nasir Khan, University of Auckland, New Zealand
The goal of universalization of primary education
primarily needs the ascertainment of people’s
educational sensitivities to establish a link between the
space of personal circumstances and resources on the
one hand, and the identification and removal of various
obstacles in availing the opportunities on the other, to
link the resources with the conversion factors. What
this goal, therefore, needs is a regimented scheme to
correlate the three spaces of capabilities development
and give it operational aptness.
By far the biggest blemish of the MDG’s framework is its
restriction of the domain of gender parity and woman
empowerment to a single capability deprivation. The
result is a fallacious endeavour to rectify the gender
imbalance with a single goal. For the removal of gender
disequilibrium, one cannot agree enough with Martha
Nussbaum who holds that gender equality does not
constitute a basic capability but in fact occupies a
crucial position in the spaces of personal circumstances
and conversion factor (Nussbaum 2000). Considering
gender inequality a basic capability deprivation
compromises its universality and confines the scope of a
malaise that cuts across all the essential capabilities, to
just one compartment.
A diagnostic misclassification has predictably led to an
array of prescriptive miscalculations. First, it is
erroneously assumed that the goal of gender parity and
women empowerment could be achieved by targeting
gender balance only in primary and secondary
education. Then, along with the ratio of girls to boys in
education, progress towards this target is measured
with the indicators of women’s share in non-agriculture
employment and parliaments. Nothing explains this
methodological gaffe other than a suppositional
overstretch presuming that either all the employed and
elected women are educated, or education produce only
employment and parliamentary capabilities in females.
Therefore, it is hardly surprising if this shallow
approach has overlooked some of the very crucial
factors influencing gender parity even within education
such as; a girl’s position in the household, economic
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