indian council of medical research - Pondicherry University DSpace ...

4 "Girls cannot just go anywhere for studying. If it is a boy and if it gets late, he
will stay in his fnend's house. A girl cannot do that. She can read if the school
IS in the village ~tselP' (A 40 year old man In a group dlscuss~on)
"If the girl IS educated the11 we have to look out for an educated boy" (A 40
year old woman tn a group d~scuss~on)
6 "ARer XI1 standard, I jolned the correspondence courcie at Annamalai
Unlverslty. My parents were not keen ~nitially. Later they agreed and did not
put any obstruction" (A 22 year old woman ~n an In-depth ~ntervlew)
p) Other Ep~dem~oloq~cal Methods
Data were obtalned on thls Issue of education and the girl chfld from the vlllage while
taklng census, as well as from the cohort Though the results have been mentioned In
the chapter on educat~on (Chapter 6 4), relevant findlngs wlth respect to the girl ch~ld
are summansed below
(I) Census
-. Signlftcantly more number of boys than girls (between 520 years of age) were
enrolled ~n school In the study vlliage as shown by the fact that 430 out of 503
(85 5%) g~rls and 482 out of 516 boys (93 4%) were found to be enrolled ~n school
at the tlme of taklng census (p < 0 05)
., The proport~on of ch~ldren studylng In the prlmary and m~ddle school was
sign~flcantly more In boys when compared to girls (p < 0 05)
No s~gn~f~cant
difference was observed between the genders ~n the proport~on who were studylng
In h~gh school (p > 0 05)
Among the village populat~on over 20 years of age, a sign~flcantly h~gher proportlon
of males had completed h~gh school educat~on and college educat~on (21 0% and
5 0%) respectively when compared to females In whom the correspond~ng flgures
were 6 9% and 1 3% respecbvely (p < 0 05)