The impact of COVID-19 on girls’ education in India

Malala Fund Education Champion Yuman Hussain is the Executive Director of the Azad India Foundation (AIF), a nonprofit that supports women, adolescents and children in Kishanganj by providing them with education and life skills training. (Courtesy of Malala Fund)

Malala Fund Education Champions Aheli Chowdhury and Yuman Hussain discuss their work keeping girls learning during the crisis.

COVID-19 is creating a girls’ education crisis in India.

Before the pandemic, 40% of the over 30 million out-of-school children in India were adolescent girls. Gender inequality, worries about safety and cultural norms prevented girls from going to school. Now the COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated the inequalities girls already faced. Increased poverty, household chores, lack of digital access and child labor is further limiting their opportunities to learn. 

Malala Fund Education Champion and director of Joint Operation for Social Help (JOSH) Aheli Chowdhury says that the economic impacts of the pandemic have had disastrous effects on girls’ education in India. “The income of people has consistently gone down [during the pandemic], and when the family income goes down, girls are the first ones to be pulled out of school,” she shares. From April to June 2020 — during which the country was in quarantine — India’s GDP dropped by 24.4%. The incomes of salaried workers fell 35% while the incomes of daily laborers fell 75% through December 2020. Aheli explains that the unstable financial situation throughout the COVID-19 crisis has caused many families to pull their daughters out of school, either to work or because they could no longer afford it. Many families choose to prioritize their sons’ education due to harmful gender norms. 

Lack of digital access has stopped girls from learning at home during quarantine. Malala Fund Education Champion and Executive Director of Azad India Foundation (AIF) Yuman Hussain noticed that many of the girls she works with didn’t have devices or smartphones for online schooling. According to a study conducted by the Centre for Budget and Policy Studies (CBPS), only 30% of children surveyed in India reported having access to a phone, with only 26% of girls having access in comparison to 37% of boys. Yuman explains that without a smartphone it is “very difficult for the girls” to continue their studies remotely during the pandemic.

“Most students don't have mobile phones or any form of digital access, and that's true for girls, mostly for girls, because even if there is one smartphone, it won't be for the girl. Most of the time it would be one smartphone in the family and that would be typically for the father or the brother,” agrees Aheli. She shares that about 25–30% of students in rural Uttar Pradesh — the majority of whom are girls — have stopped attending school since the start of the pandemic. She says the seven-month gap when the country was under quarantine and students couldn’t learn at home has been a major factor in preventing them from returning to the classroom.

“The income of people has consistently gone down [during the pandemic], and when the family income goes down, girls are the first ones to be pulled out of school.”

— Aheli Chowdhury

An additional component limiting girls’ education during the COVID-19 pandemic is an increase in the number of early marriages for girls in India. “In many places — especially where we work in Uttar Pradesh — many girls have been married off, and there is no hope of them getting back to school in between,” explains Aheli. According to the data provided to NPR by the government in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, officials have had to stop 208 child marriages in the five months from April through August in 2020. In comparison, authorities prevented 116 child marriages in the 12 months between April 2019 and March 2020, which was prior to the pandemic. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) cites increased poverty during the pandemic as one of the reasons for the increase in child marriages during the pandemic.

Despite the challenges, Yuman and Aheli have been working to help girls in India continue learning. Yuman and her team at AIF have focused on in-person community work. For example, the parents of a student Yuman helped enroll in school had arranged for their daughter to be married while she was in the middle of her studies. Yuman says the girl was reluctant to abandon her education and called her teacher for help. Along with AIF staff, the teacher spoke to the family and with the involvement of community members and religious leaders, managed to convince the parents to delay her marriage for another two years so that she could complete her education.

Malala Fund Education Champion and director of Joint Operation for Social Help (JOSH) Aheli Chowdhury is working to help girls in India continue learning through the COVID-19 crisis. (Courtesy of Malala Fund)

With her Malala Fund grant, Aheli originally planned to monitor the government's implementation of girls’ education in many districts. However, quarantine changed her approach. She now works on getting government scholarships for girls in minority communities. Aheli says that this strategy was “the only way to stop people from dropping out” in the communities where she works. “If they have scholarships, then they are not dependent on the family income for them to get past school and pay for their education,” she explains. In the future, Aheli hopes to continue presenting girls with scholarship opportunities and making sure they actually receive the money and is advocating to waive girls’ school fees for the next couple of years.

Education is not only the right of every girl, but also crucial to societal development. Educating girls promotes economic growth, encourages political leadership, creates peace, helps the environment, saves lives and so much more. With millions of girls at risk of dropping out of school due to COVID-19, it is important that we all act now to support the efforts of activists like Yuman and Aheli and prevent the pandemic from jeopardizing girls’ dreams for the future.