Education
As far as education is concerned, the literacy rate for women is slightly higher than those for men. Female literacy rate (as defined as 15 years of age or older with the ability to read and write) was 88.8% in 2004. Male literacy rate was 88.4%.
Women already represent more an undisputed majority in many of the college courses. In the areas of Health and Human Sciences, they account for 66% and 71% of all students, respectively. Besides, as a whole, 53% of all Brazilians who are in universities are women. The progresses in education for women have started some decades ago, but, in fact, since the 1930s women have had a higher number of years in school, in average, than men when it refers to the lower levels of scholarity, and, since the 1970s, they surpassed men in the higher levels, as well.
Until the mid-to-late nineteenth century, education for girls focused on domestic skills. In 1879, Brazilian institutions of higher learning admitted upper-class, mostly urban, white women- while the rest of the female population remained illiterate. Currently the literacy rates between men and women are relatively proportionate to the population and the level of education of women is now greater than that of men.
In 1970, there were approximately 19,000 women professionals in Brazil, including engineers, architects, dentists, economists, professors, lawyers, and doctors. By 1980, there were about 95,800 women in these fields.
However, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, psychology, literature, and arts classes are composed almost entirely of women, in contrast to agriculture and national defense courses, in which extremely low numbers of women are enrolled.
Read more about this topic: Women In Brazil
Famous quotes containing the word education:
“From infancy, almost, the average girl is told that marriage is her ultimate goal; therefore her training and education must be directed toward that end. Like the mute beast fattened for slaughter, she is prepared for that.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“If you complain of neglect of education in sons, what shall I say with regard to daughters, who every day experience the want of it? With regard to the education of my own children, I find myself soon out of my depth, destitute and deficient in every part of education. I most sincerely wish ... that our new Constitution may be distinguished for encouraging learning and virtue. If we mean to have heroes, statesmen, and philosophers, we should have learned women.”
—Abigail Adams (1744–1818)
“Think of the importance of Friendship in the education of men.... It will make a man honest; it will make him a hero; it will make him a saint. It is the state of the just dealing with the just, the magnanimous with the magnanimous, the sincere with the sincere, man with man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)