"Female literacy rates in four countries of South Asia are among the lowest in the world: Nepal (25%), Pakistan (32%), Bangladesh (31%), and India (48%) (UNESCO, 1998). High rates of female illiteracy have severe consequences for women, their families, and their communities. Many researchers have noted a correlation between low rates of literacy and other indicators of underdevelopment, such as poverty, illness, malnutrition, high infant mortality, and unemployment..."

It is in this context that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) worked with World Education to carry out the Girls' and Women's Education Policy Research Activity (GWE-PRA) in Cambodia, Benin, Bolivia, Honduras, Nepal and Peru. The objective of this activity, which was prompted by evidence of the impact of girls' primary school completion on girls' and women's long-term social and economic development, was to enable host-country governments and private sector/non-governmental entities to formulate, institutionalise, and implement country initiatives for girls' education. World Education was tasked with: a) carrying out analytic studies on girls' and women's education programmes to determine their impact on the country's social and economic development; b) identifying cost-effective elements; and c) sharing research findings with a broad audience, including decision-makers.

This 176-page paper shares the results of a research programme supported by the initiative in the Terai region of Nepal. The research aim was to find out if increasing women's literacy skills through non-formal, basic education improves women's social and economic development. GWE-PRA investigated two integrated literacy programmes - 1) The Basic and Primary Education Project (BPEP)'s Women's Education Program (WEP), which recognises that unless mothers are literate children's enrollment in primary school will not increase. Run by the Nepali government (with funding from several organisations, including the Royal Danish Embassy, the World Bank, UNICEF and Norad), WEP provides literacy skills and knowledge to women and helps them become self-reliant by providing skill training to run income-generating activities; and 2) the USAID-funded HEAL programme, managed by World Education, which is an effort to "reduce fertility and to improve maternal and child health in Nepal through the provision of integrated literacy and health education courses for rural women".

Responses of women participating in these programmes were compared to those of women in a control group of non-participating women. The mean age in both groups was 31.4 years of age. A sub-sample of 20 women (16 from the experimental group and 4 from the control group) were interviewed at intervals over a 3-year period to provide more in-depth, qualitative information. Researchers examined changes among women in the following indicators of social and economic status and development:

1. literacy/education level
2. health knowledge and practice
3. participation in income-earning activities
4. political awareness and participation
5. community participation
6. children's education.

The key finding, shared in this report, is that "on average, considering all other significant factors, a woman who participates in and completes one of the two programs (HEAL or BPEP) is estimated to gain 13 percentage points more in the index of women's social and economic development than a woman who does not participate. Even a woman who is likely to drop out later is estimated to gain 5.7 percentage points more than a woman who did not participate at all....The net gain...of the participants over non-participants, considering all other things equally, indicates a significant investment return and would translate into other positive effects on children's education, local economy, and social capital for the country. Hence, we recommend continuing support for such programs."

Detailed analysis is provided in this report of how women who undertook BPEP or HEAL fared with regard to the 6 indicators presented above; in sum, participants:

• are more aware of health and reproductive issues, political affairs, and the importance of children's education
• are more likely to participate in income-generating projects, political elections, their children's education and community activities
• have greater literacy skills.

Researchers found that a number of factors increased the chances of women staying in the programme, such as being older and having taken part in previous programmes. Increasing financial and time costs mean that women of lower socio-economic status are more likely to miss classes and eventually drop out; this a worrying finding, as this is the primary group that the programmes are designed to serve.

Based on these findings, the researchers recommend the following:

• continuing to focus on the development, testing, and refining of locally relevant curriculum materials and training programmes, with support from the international donor community
• placing greater emphasis on the importance of children's education, as well as finding ways in which women can become involved in improving their children's education, rather than focusing on aspects where women's development is not significantly improved
• strengthening the connection with children's education by linking literacy programmes directly with formal schools, or by involving literacy class participants in Parent Teacher Associations or in multi-generational programmes
• giving greater priority to income-earning activities either by adding additional components to the curricula or by ushering participants who have completed literacy programmes into income-earning programmes.

id21EducationNews Number 23, January 2005; and "Women's Literacy Programmes Improve Social and Economic Development in Nepal"; and the USAID website.