Are we a society that celebrates only well-educated, advantaged women in Women’s Month? Or are we ready to help disadvantaged women change their lives?
Some brave women have escaped the restraining bars that hold them in compliance and subservience. Many of them have not escaped.
Sometimes we women make the bars ourselves, because that’s all we know. We may dream of freedom. Freedom for women means looking after yourself (and your children if you need to). Women (and men) need effective skills and knowledge to do this. But to get knowledge and skills every woman needs education and training.
We know that slightly more women than men are illiterate or semi-literate in South Africa. Most of them are in the rural areas, especially in KwaZulu-Natal. But what does this mean for the woman we see on the street, in the shops or in our homes? Can she read and write? Her appearance will not tell you that she is illiterate.
Most illiterate women are unemployed, self-employed or work in our homes. Zinhle Sithole (23), for example, sifts through a Durban waste dump to find food and clothes for herself and her young son. She never went to school. Her son’s father abandoned his wife and child years ago.
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A heavy burden
Under-educated women are often the heads of single-parent families. Circumstances force women, who may be illiterate or semi-literate, to be household managers, healthcare providers and breadwinners.
An illiterate woman faces problems in many aspects of life because she cannot use literacy skills. She needs the rich general knowledge about life that many educated people take for granted.
How can an illiterate woman protect her rights in a marriage, even if she knows them? She does not know about the different forms of marriage and how her choice will affect her rights and her future.
She will believe anything that people “of authority” — usually men — tell her about how she must behave in a marriage and what she is entitled to if her marriage ends. We have seen so many women lose everything when they are widowed, although they have inheritance rights.
Easily taken advantage of
She cannot protect her rights and interests in ownership of property, because she cannot read contracts and agreements and because she has no way of finding out information. She can be easily robbed and cheated by unscrupulous businesses, con artists and even by her own children. She will never have the opportunity to use a bank account.
If she has a small business she cannot cost what she produces, cannot understand written contracts, cannot source raw materials or buy to the best advantage. The success of job creation and small business development programmes for such women will be very limited.
An illiterate mother sometimes cannot take responsibility for the quality of her children’s education or participate in school management. She might not be able to help young children to learn early literacy or assist them later with their homework. There may be no culture of reading in her home.
She cannot be part of development initiatives in tourism or in environmental development or in other activities because she cannot access knowledge through text or training. She might not value her own work as a caregiver or a family manager because no one speaks about these roles and she does not read about them.
Illiteracy as a health threat
She is at the mercy of her sexual partner. She cannot read public information or participate in learning programmes about primary healthcare. She has no resources and no knowledge about her options. If she is illiterate and ignorant about HIV she could condemn a whole family to death. And even if she has the knowledge she cannot use it to negotiate safe sex because she may depend on her partner for money and food.
In KwaZulu-Natal’s Umkhanyakude District, a tribal court recently fined a wife a cow (R11?000). Her crime? She refused to have intercourse with her husband unless he used a condom. He is a migrant worker with three wives and two of them have already died. The remaining wife was worried about HIV. Does she know that she is not bound by the tribal court’s ruling? How can she know, unless someone teaches her about human rights and the law?
An illiterate woman is less able to break out of an abusive family situation because she does not know that she has any rights or where to go for help. She is as much trapped by custom in the relationship as she is trapped by having no option but to endure poor treatment.
She battles with the paperwork of life. She cannot register a child’s birth without help, apply for maintenance at the court, apply for a child support grant, apply for a pension, apply for a house, apply for a loan or write a business plan. The list of paper barriers that stop an illiterate woman from taking control of her life is long.
A loss of self-confidence
Perhaps the most destructive effect of illiteracy is a loss of self-confidence. A woman who feels her education is inadequate stays out of discussions and arguments because she feels she does not have enough information. She sees herself as unimportant, useless, merely a kitchen-dweller, because she does not have education. She can do little more than dream about changing her life.
Becoming literate can have remarkable effects. Literacy programmes that work with women often tell of the almost visible improvement in the self-confidence of learners when they become literate.
Where there is no education, women lead the lives their mothers and grandmothers lived. They have a lot of children, whether they can afford them or not, and they continue the pattern of dependence, under-education and poverty.
Education gives people the ability to plan their lives. A woman who has learned to read and write, and to plan, begins to imagine the kind of life she would like to lead and learns what she has to do to get there. She learns about other people’s lives and sees options she never saw before.
At this point she is ready for help, to start a business, build a home, get more education, join a savings club, plant a new crop, start family planning, get an HIV test — whatever will work for her.
Giving women the opportunity of choice
We need strong education programmes for women, to show them that they have choices. We need to help women dream and then make their dreams practical. We cannot hope to strengthen families unless we give women literacy and skills to be strong people themselves.
Listening, speaking, numeracy, reading and writing skills and general knowledge will help women to participate in democratic processes, such as school meetings or ward committee meetings, and will give them “tools” in the broadest sense to use in income generation.
Literacy will give women the knowledge they need to take action on family health, whether that is growing vegetables, improving sanitation or accessing a clean water supply.
South Africa needs more aggressively promoted literacy programmes for women. Many women do not know they have the choice or the opportunity to become literate. They also do not know what literacy can mean for their lives. South Africa knows how to provide a comprehensive approach to literacy for women, and we should be doing it.
Pat Dean is the director of Operation Upgrade of South Africa, an adult literacy NGO.