ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the education and development in Sri Lanka from a gender perspective takes into account all these partially explanatory theories by exploring three facets of the education and development interface as it affects women: gender-based distribution of educational opportunity. It includes the relationship between education and female labour force participation and the impact of education on gender roles and relations within the family. In traditional Sri Lanka society, with its agrarian economy, feudal social order, and strong Buddhist and Hindu religious foundations, formal education was restricted to religious centers of learning and was complemented by household education and apprenticeship or on-the-job training in vocational skills. Successive phases of colonial rule introduced economic and social changes. The Portuguese and the Dutch in turn ruled the coastal areas from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, and both colonial powers established a few educational institutions to teach chiefly Christianity.
