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ShareAhmedabad: Be it Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh or Sharjah and Dubai in the Gulf, girls have come out on top in the CBSE school boards. The pass percentage for girls is 85.94 per cent, as compared to 77.4 per cent for boys.
This trend is not peculiar to this year. Girls have over the last decade dominated the exam scene in school results. But when it comes to professional exams or group aggregates, boys make it to the finish line faster.
At adolescence, girls tend to mature emotionally faster than boys. They are more accountable and responsible. This results in a dedicated approach towards studies, thereby translating into better grades in examinations. Their research work for projects is more meticulous, which results in better appearance and presentation. They are less distracted by sports. Less time is lost playing on Play Stations, watching late night Champions League soccer finales or celebrating 52 days of the Indian Premier League (IPL).
When it comes to professional courses, the percentage of attendance of girls starts to fall. By the time girls complete their professional programmes, most are married off. Priorities thereon begin to change.
They focus on becoming fine homemakers and generally do what is expected of them. Many forget their dreams, loose steam in chasing their careers and reorient themselves to a new way of life.
Meanwhile, boys have caught up, with strong ambitions, a need to succeed and the Darwinian survival of the fittest. Career focus is a bull's eye and it is at this stage that they go well past the finish line.
The small number of women who continue to balance work and marriage do so with a sense of curtailed freedom and disadvantage of keeping up with long hours, which is essential in the early years of a career. These women put in long struggles, balancing the threefold aspect of career, household and children. At the end, they come out with immense strength and a sense of multi-focus.
The few women who make it make it well. Although corporate boardrooms and women is decision-making positions maybe less than three per cent, it must be remembered that these are the women who have held onto to their dreams despite most odds.
It appears that at school boards, there is equal representation of boys and girls and those girls are clearly faring better. Maybe there is more to it than meets the eye.
If all was well, there would not be a need for reservation policies or social initiatives for discouraging bias against girl child education, by providing free education for girls in urban private elite schools, special schemes for girl dropouts and scholarships for the meritorious ones.
Focus on girl child education cannot be overstated. Educating the fairer sex, which forms 50 per cent of the population, is a critical aspect in social development and prosperity. As is aptly said, "when you teach a woman, you teach the entire family."
The writer is an entrepreneur and educationist.
