“Boys can’t work”

In Yei, South Sudan, young girls’ performance in school is kept down by domestic work. Burden sharing between boys and girls seems to be the obvious solution

By Sine Schack Vestergaard, OD Denmark

On a day in November the library of Yei Resource Centre was completely full. Sitting on every available free spot in the building, the students of secondary school were preparing for their exams. But something was missing. The girls.

The library of Yei Resource Centre and the other centres operated by New Sudan Education Association (NSEA) and funded by the Danish students’ organisation Operation Day’s Work (OD) are a success. The centres located in Rubeke, Kajo Keji, Nimule and of course in Yei are all being used by a high number of students.

But from a gender equity perspective, the image is different: In Yei Resource Centre for example, the percentage of girls is approximately six of the total users.

Girls overwork

One of the main reasons for girls not attending the library is the fact that they are heavily loaded with work in the homes. Girls who go to secondary school are expected to do approximately six hours of work daily besides the studying. So that clearly leaves little time for reading and going to the library.

In war-ridden Sudan, many women are left alone with the responsibility of the family, no man being there to introduce the boy to his duties. The women feel overworked, and where do they seek help? With their daughters, of course, which results in even more work for the girls. Some have to provide for their family by selling things in the market, others have to earn money for their own school fees. And the boys are indeed left with much more time for studying than the girls, even if the girls go to secondary school as well.

Burden sharing

“Why don’t you ask your brothers to help you?” I asked the girls in Nyogwe Secondary School in Yei. The girls laughed quietly, looking at us as sceptically as if we had asked them why don’t they pick up their sweeper and fly away on it.

“You can’t ask a boy to cook,” one girl said. “Maybe sweeping a little, but fetching water – no, that could not happen.”

As these girls expressed, many women also believe that their sons cannot work.

Grace Kadayi, chairperson of the Widows’ Association in Yei, actually compared the way mothers look at boys to an empty bottle of mineral water:

“It is as if I say to this bottle: You go and prepare supper. You go and fetch water. Everybody will laugh, saying a bottle cannot work. It is the same way mothers look at their boys. As if they cannot work.”

So for the young girls in Yei the discussion of gender balance becomes very concrete. If for instance their brothers could help them fetch water or go to the market, it might leave just two hours free for them to go to the library and thus perform better in school.

But the girls have a long way to go. First of all they themselves need to believe that change is possible. For that to happen, MS Uganda can play an important role, encouraging role models and keeping the discussion on burden sharing alive.