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

as an excuse to stop thelr girls from gotng to school In Indla, some of the reasons
quoted for stopplng a glrl's education were -i) daughters get mamed and go away, 11)
they were more useful In household work, 111) ~t was unacceptable to send daughters to
a dlstanl place or to read under a male teacher, IV) ~t was easler to marry a less
educated glrl (UNICEF,l990) Further, the qual~tabve research showed that mamage
for educated girls becomes d~ff~wlt In terms of the cost as well as f~nd~ng a groom It
also revealed that an unmamed g~rl was a soual burden The parents therefore wanted
to reduce the burden by gettlng her marned as early as posslble In the late adolescent
age the pnonty for a girl In her soclal context 1s mamage and not educatlon
Education was not golng to make a glrl's marnage easy or less costly On the other
hand, formal schooilng as a prospective avenue for employment was more Important
for a son In lnd~a Th~s IS an Important motlvatlng factor for most of the parents wantlng
to give thelr sons the best poss~ble educat~on In some states l~ke Maharashtra and
Tam11 Nadu, there are lncentlves for promoting female educatlon In Maharashtra, girls
are glven free educat~on up to XI1 standard (Nagpure,1992) In Tam11 Nadu, there 15 a
speclal marnage grant for g~rls educated up to standard Vlll (Anonymous,l996)
Although these rncent~ves have Improved the enrollment and attendance rates of glrls
over the years, the rates have st111 not become equal to boys Thls 15 because of the
cultural practices and pressures that st111 keep the educat~onal status of a girl chlld at a
lower level
7.5.5 Daily activitypattern
Studles have shown that In children behveen 514 years of age, the mean work load In
Qlrrv was greater than that In boys In rural areas, whereas, In urban localltles, boys had