I.1 Teaching “ladies” during the rule of Ḫaylä Selasse (1930–1974)

2With the Orthodox Church school system and Koranic schools, Ethiopia has a century-old educational history. But these institutions, which trained clerics as well as laymen in the service of religious and political powers, were hardly open to girls and women, except for basic literacy and basic knowledge of scriptures. Therefore, before the end of the 19th century, very few women were literate, and most of them were from the nobility.

3At the end of the 19th century, Protestant and Catholic missionaries provided school education to Ethiopian women. In the 1870s, Swedish missionaries started with schools for both boys and girls, in Massäwa and Geleb. Around 50 female students, mostly freed slaves and orphans, learned church history, catechism, general (European) history, geography, and languages (Amharic, Oromiffa, Swedish, and German), as well as sewing and basketry. Outstanding women were schooled there, such as Aster Gäno who translated the Bible into Oromiffa together with Onesimos Näsib. While the Catholic Lazarists also had a girls’ school in Northern Ethiopia, the French Franciscan Sisters started providing school education for girls in their orphanage in Harar. In 1910, they opened a school in Addis Ababa, with separate classes for girls from lower and upper class families. The first group learned how to manage an average Ethiopian home, while the second learned academic knowledge, “refined” manners and skills, following the trends of what was expected from bourgeois and aristocratic ladies in Europe. In the 1920s, the sisters were running 10 schools, mostly in Eastern Ethiopia, teaching 357 female students. In 1924, the Swedish Evangelical Mission opened a girls’ school in Addis Ababa. In 1936, they enrolled more girls than boys, 84 and 77 respectively. This testifies to a social demand for girls’ schooling, at least in some sectors of Ethiopian society.

Figure 25. Les Missions Catholiques, The Franciscan Sisters of Lafto and their students

I.2 Teaching girls and women during the reign of Ḫaylä Selasse (1930–1974)

4In 1931, the government opened the Empress Menen School. Conceived as a female counterpart of the Teferi Mekonnen School, which took in only boys, it accommodated around 80 girls from the Ethiopian nobility and expatriate families. The ladies learned Amharic, French, arithmetic, history, geography, drawing, cooking, and health care.

5As in the missionary schools, the greatest attention was paid to moral education, good manners, and obedience. Before the Italian occupation, some high-class families sent their daughters abroad for further education. Such was the case of Sənəddu Gäbru, who studied in Switzerland, served as headmistress of Empress Menen School in the 1950s, wrote several literary works, and was the first woman elected to parliament. We can also mention Täblat Rädda, who studied in Khartoum and who wrote in 1926 a paper in defence of girls’ education in the newspaper Bǝrhanǝnna Sǝlam.

6After the liberation, the national school system was established in relation with Emperor Ḫaylä Śǝllase’s nation-building and centralizing project. The mission schools were required to follow the national curriculum. They were, therefore, well integrated into the national system. Coeducation was the norm, except in some elite schools, both governmental and mission, which were single-sex. For instance, Teferi Mekonnen, Wingate and Saint Joseph were boys’ schools, while Menen and Saint Mary were girls’ schools. Compared with males, female students were very few. In 1959–1960, girls made up 22% of the student population at primary level and 7% at secondary level. In 1974, the proportions were 27% and 17%, respectively. At university level, girls were only 6% of the student body in 1974. The social background of female and male students differed. While male students came from social classes ranging from the upper class to farmers’ families, the social origins of schoolgirls were more homogeneous. Most of those who continued after primary education were of urban high-class or middle-class origin. The main reasons were that families were unwilling to send their daughters far from home for further schooling, or else they interrupted their education for marriage.

I.3 Learning for the masses since the Därg period

7The Därg period was a turning point in education in general and in girls’ education, in particular. The socialist outlook implied mass education. The policy was to spread basic education to all the population through the literacy campaign and the building of primary schools in every wäräda. The urban poor and farmers’ girls and women were strongly encouraged to join literacy classes and attend primary schools. In addition, they were willing to get formal education. As a result, in 1991, girls represented around 40% of the student body at primary and secondary levels. This trend has continued until today and, now gender parity has almost been achieved at primary and secondary levels. Moreover, an affirmative action policy for women to join higher education facilitates their entrance at university level (Ministry of Education 2010).

II.1 From teaching how to be a good housewife to learning “women’s work”

9At first, girls’ schooling aimed at making good wives and mothers of them. Within the modernisation theories framework that dominated educational discourses in the 1950s-1960s, the women’s roles were to reform the family in society (i.e the private sphere), while men’s role was to reform the administration of the state (i.e the public sphere). For instance, the contents of a home economics textbook were “human relations” (including especially “family life”), clothing and tailoring, childcare, hygiene, nutrition, health and domestic resources management. This school subject tailored especially for girls focused on the rationalisation of domestic tasks (house activities planning and accounting to maximise the management of resources, time and energy), on science (medicine and pedagogy), and on moral education (respect for family hierarchies, husband and wife sharing of decisions in the framework of pacified human relations). Women were to be “professional housewives,” the bearers and keepers of these domestic reforms (Ministry of Education and Fine Arts 1971). Increasingly, starting from the 1950s, women were directed towards “women’s work”: nurses, teachers at the primary level, and secretaries, jobs which are extensions of women’s roles in the family. To some extent, this trend has continued until today. While more and more school-educated women are entering the labour market, they are confined to women’s work, and the most prestigious careers are reserved for men. Nevertheless, thanks to their school education, women are progressively and slowly entering male bastions and becoming lawyers, engineers, medical doctors etc.

II.2 A gendered school socialisation: the stereotypes

10School socialisation is in itself gendered. In textbooks, females are less often represented than males and gendered stereotypes are numerous. Schematically speaking, women are pictured as docile, obedient, weak etc. and restricted to women’s roles. On the contrary, men are characterised as courageous, with competitive spirit, and powerful. In class, teachers have tended to encourage males’ participation rather than females, and have often considered boys more gifted than girls in academic achievements. These trends are slowly changing over time. For instance, some improvements are noticeable today regarding the representation of women in the textbooks. Moreover, the increased number of women teachers helps to correct the gendered biases in pedagogical relationships.

III.1 Changes are visible in urban areas

11School education has given rise to a new social group of women, who are visible in the public sphere: the urban middle-class women who are working in offices, in teaching, in nursing, and in administration. But some lower-class women with little formal education have sometimes managed to strengthen their positions to gain more autonomy. After the literacy campaign in the 1980s and with adult education programs today, thanks to their new literacy skills more and more women are opening little shops, working as health assistants etc.; they are also encouraging their daughters to continue furthering their education. Finally, one can also assume that literacy skills have brought changes to the daily activities of women, in a society where mastering reading, writing, and numeracy is more and more needed. In Ethiopia, as elsewhere, these everyday uses of literacy, which are less visible, need to be studied further by researchers.

Figure 26. Ministry of Information, ትምህርት በኢትዮጵያ (Education in Ethiopia)

III.2 School-educated women, the voices of women’s rights movements

12Lastly, while as in most parts of the world the higher spheres of political positions are still male dominated, school-educated women are today very active in Ethiopian civil society. Non-governmental organisations such as: the Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association (EWLA), Progynist, Earuyan Solutions, or Setaweet, to mention only a few, are struggling hard to get women’s rights respected and women’s opportunities expanded. One also has to highlight the dedication of many women teachers who, through the girls’ clubs established in the secondary schools throughout Ethiopia, are working daily with their female students to give them confidence and, again, get their rights respected. The same can be said about the dedication of ordinary nurses and health workers who, in towns and in the countryside, are trying to improve health and protect the physical integrity of Ethiopian women. All these women use their school-education to improve women’s conditions.