SPATIAL DIMENSION OF WOMEN’S EDUCATION AND GENDER DISPARITY IN EDUCATION OF WEST BENGAL

Women, a disadvantaged group, have been deprived of education in India for ages which is a matter of great concern as women’s education acts as a catalytic factor for a country’s progress and development. In this concern, the present study has focused on investigating the spatial dimension of women’s education and gender disparity in education as well across districts of West Bengal (W.B). The regional inequality in the temporal progress of women’s education and how many years are needed for a hundred percent literacy of women has been investigated. Data in the study are obtained from National Family and Health Survey (NFHS). The study adopts the Sopher’s Disparity Index to depict gender disparity in education. Temporal change in ‘woman’s schooling years’ is shown in percent points. The finding shows the uneven distribution of women literacy in W.B., where it is reported low in the districts of Birbhum, Bankura, Murshidabad, Uttar Dinajpur and Puruliya with less than 70.88 percent. The percentage of women’s in ten or more years of schooling is observed low in the districts of Puruliya, Koch Bihar, Paschim Medinipur, Birbhum and Murshidabad with less than 27.20 percent. The gender disparity in education is found highest and lowest in Darjiling and South 24 Parganas respectively. The temporal progress in ‘woman’s schooling years’ between the two time periods of 2015-16 and 2019-20 is observed as highest in Malda district and lowest in the two districts of Murshidabad and Paschim Medinipur. The existing literature supports that parental son preferences, poverty, girl’s early marriage, social practices, and lack of sanitation facilities in schools are some of the main factors affecting women’s education and hence gender disparity in W.B. The campaign of education for all, scholarships to girls and women, and poverty alleviation programmes have helped enough to bridge such gender disparity at education in India. However, a long way need to go.