The low value attached to female education in much of India links with some deep-rooted features of gender relations. Three of these links have been widely observed.

First the gender division of labour (combined with patrilineal property rights) tends to reduce the perceived benefits of female education. In rural India, a vast majority of girls are expected to spend most of their adult life in domestic work and child-rearing (and possibly some family labour in agriculture). It is in the light of these social expectations about the adult life of women that female education appears to many parents to be of somewhat uncertain value, if not quite ‘pointless’. Of course, female education can bring immense benefits even within the limited field of domestic work and child-rearing, but these benefits do not always receive adequate recognition.

Second, the norm of patrilocal exogamy (requiring a woman to settle in her husband’s village at the time of marriage and to severe links with her own family), prevalent in large parts of India, has the effect of further undermining the economic incentives which parents might have to send their daughters to school. Since ‘an Indian girl is but a sojourner in her own family’, as Sudhir Kakar (1979) aptly puts it, the investments that parents make in the education of a daughter primarily benefit other, distant households. This can strongly reduce the perceived value of female education, at least from the point of view of parental self-interest. The perception is neatly summed up in such popular sayings as bringing up a daughter is like watering a plant in another’s courtyard.

Third the practice of dowry and the ideology of hypergamous marriage (it being thought best that a woman should marry ‘up’ in the social scale), also influential in large parts of India, can turn female education into a liability. In communities with low levels of male education, parents are often apprehensive about educating a daughter, for fear of being unable to find (or to ‘afford’) a suitably educated groom. Even in communities where basic education is considered to improve a daughter’s marriage prospects (because young men expect their brides to have at least some education), ‘over-educating’ a daughter may make her more difficult-and more expensive – to marry. There is much evidence that these preoccupations are quite real for many parents.

Given these and other links between female education and gender relations, it is not suprising that the progress of female education has been particularly slow in areas of India (such as the large north Indian states) where the gender division of labour, partrilineal inheritance, patrilocal residence, village exogamy, hypergamous marriage, and related patriarchal norms tend to be particularly influential. The positive side of the same coin is that the expansion of female literacy has been comparatively rapid in areas where gender relations are less patriarchal. Kerala is the most obvious example, but the same observation also applies to varying extents in a number of other states. For instance, in Meghalya (an overwhelmingly tribal state with a strong matrilineal tradition), there is no gender bias in school attendance. Female school attendance also tends to be comparatively high (with little gender bias if any) in may other parts of the Himalyan region in north and north east India, including Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Mizoram, Sikkim and Manipur. As several studies have noted, the patriarchal norms tend to be less rigid in those regions than elsewhere in north India.

In regions with rigid patriarchal norms, it is clear that the considerations involved in educational decisions are radically different for boys and girls. In the case of male education, the economic incentives are strong, because improved education enhances employment prospects, and parents have a strong stake in the economic advancement of their sons (including but not exclusively – for reasons of old – age security). The influence of these economic motives on educational decisions relating to male children emerges clearly in many studies. Economic returns and parental self-interest, on the other hand, provide very weak incentives for female education, given the prevailing gender division of labour, marriage practices, and property rights. Parental concern for the well-being of a daughter in her own right, and recognition of the contribution which education can make to the quality of her life (and that of others), are more important motivations.