d are more likely to have children survive into adulthood. Data from 33 less-developed countries show that every additional year of mother's schooling is associated with a seven to nine per cent drop in child mortality.13 In all these ways, education is a necessary tool for delivering women from the sorrows of perpetual childbearing and breaking the bonds to free women from their subordination.
In the World Declaration on Education for All, adopted in Thailand in 1990, countries agreed to give female education increased attention, stating that: "The most urgent priority is to ensure access to, and improve the quality of, education for girls and women, and to remove every obstacle that hampers their active participation".14 I have referred to some of the obstacles and the solutions needed to address the gender gap in education - such as recruiting and training more female teachers, establishing more community-based (less distant) schools and providing greater privacy and safety for girls. Experiments with flexibility in the hours, days and seasons of classes have also proven successful for example, late afternoon or evening classes in India and Kenya are attended by many adolescent girls who have spent a full day on household and productive tasks.15 The success of non-formal primary education programmes such as that organized by the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee in attracting girls from poor families shows that adapting the learning opportunities to the circumstances of poverty and the disadvantage of children is a far more pragmatic approach than requiring children to adjust to the conventional rules of primary school.16 Waiving fees or providing scholarships for girls may also be necessary, particularly at the secondary- school level: a project in rural Zimbabwe has shown that no family approached with an offer to support a daughter through secondary school has turned down this support, and all are more enthusiastic about their daughters' futures as a result.17
Making the school curriculum more appealing and relevant to girls and removing gender stereotyping from textbooks can also help to keep girls in school once they are there. If girls are constantly presented with stories about successful men or pictures of men in important and professional positions, while at the same time women are presented only in secondary, inferior, or mothering roles, their own ambitions and expectations may become frustrated. They also become further conditioned to accept their subordinate position. Our educational systems can produce literate housewives or articulate, innovative citizens, depending on the tools and methods which we choose to utilise.
The education and training requirements for reaching the top in some of the professions may be so inconsistent with the demands of childbearing that, unless special adaptations are introduced, women in our cultural situations will be effectively excluded, thus depriving future generations of women of role-models in those profession. I have been trying, for example, to find out how many female obstetrics and gynaecology consultants we have produced locally so far. The answer, unless I am grossly misinformed, is none. This can largely be due to the fact that the residency requirements for the specialty cannot accommodate the other social roles of women soon after graduation from medical school. And yet this is a field crying out for women specialists. An effort must be made by the appropriate authorities to work out residency schemes that harmonize more with the other needs of women.
Lawrence Summers, former Chief Economist at the World Bank, wrote "Educating girls quite possibly yields a higher rate of return than any other investment available in the developing world", giving an estimated 20 per cent return on investment18. The benefits come from a healthier population and a more productive workforce. But even educated women face further barriers laid by the serpent of discrimination as they enter the workforce. Let us now consider barriers to gender equality within the economy and th