ABSTRACT
This statement from a UNESCO briefing on ‘Literacy for girls and women’ gave the justification for a policy focus on women’s literacy during the International Literacy Year (1990). The document presents the worldwide statistics on the gender gap between male and female illiteracy (20.5 per cent for men as compared with 34.9 per cent for women), as well as relating the story of an Ethiopian woman:
At 27, Birke enrolled in a literacy centre and, after six months’ conscientious and courageous attendance, despite her family and domestic obligations, she began, she said, ‘to be aware of many things. It is like being reborn, like a blind person recovering his or her sight. I had never dared hope something like that could happen to me.’
