The Golden Way Out

Nkendem Forbinake

28 June 2011

The Minister of Basic Education Mrs Youssouf Hadidja Alim yesterday in Meyomessala, South Region, formally opened a five-day seminar on “the education of women and girls.” There is really no news about a minister opening a seminar just as the education of women or the girl child are no novel issues.

There are a number of conclusions – empirical and scientific – to the fact that the hue and cry over the so-called underdog status of the Cameroonian woman or girl is a figment of some fertile imagination of some minds that simply want to have the issue on as a topic for unending discussion.

Available statistics point to the great advances Cameroonians have made in the area of women’s emancipation. A graphic example of how far we have gone as a nation can be drawn from my personal experiences as a young boy growing up in Kumba in the mid 60s where it was unusual to see a woman on the steering wheel of a car!

At the same period, it was hardly easy to see an impressive number of girls in such professional training institutions of the time as teacher training colleges, nursing schools, agricultural colleges or clerical training centres.

The seminar which opened yesterday has one of these pompous justifications: “increasing the number of girls attending school and modifying school syllabuses”. Such initiatives have been heard before.

And without undermining or neglecting technical studies and research that have been carried out, it is necessary, today, to investigate the generalised antipathy Cameroon’s womenfolk have towards attaining the highest levels of academic or professional achievement.

In Meyomessala, yesterday, experts were told that recent government actions have taken the school attendance rate of girls between six and 14 years to 88.6 per cent while the literacy rate of women – from 15 years and above – has gone up to 62.9 per cent.

Such a picture clearly sets the path for women to progress to any conceivable levels. But sadly, that is not the case. Girls tend to fall off as the academic ladder continues to get higher.

Researchers are yet to find any plausible reasons beyond the déjà-entendu such as early or precocious marriages, the preference of boys over girls, the fact that girls are a source of wealth… and so on.

By this understanding, it is easy to conclude that the emergence of women depends on the capacity of the Cameroonian society to resolutely throw off these age-old traditions and practices.

Many parents have shown their readiness to change as can be seen in the huge investments they make on the education of their female siblings even when they were very certain they were training future spouses of unknown people to the family.

This situation has come in an atmosphere of generalised value-shift. It is not unusual today to find parents who quickly opt to spend huge sums of money to train a child to become a high-flight sportsperson. That was unheard of just a few years back when the same parents spoke very proudly of their siblings undergoing a successful career in the area of, say, medicine, law or engineering.

Initiatives such as the ongoing one in Meyomessala best tell the story of the disposition of the public authorities to ensure that there is no hitch on the way of achievement for the nation’s women.

It is up to the women to take possession of all the opportunities offered, especially as there are no institutional logjams to attaining the same levels with their male counterparts. Education seems to be the golden outlet. And this is why initiatives such as the one in Meyomessala can never be one too many, as they may be seen at first sight.

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