Somali culture and female education in selected women’s association centers in Mogadishu Somalia
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2014-11
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Kampala International University, College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to assess the Somali culture and female education in Mogadishu, Somalia. This was based on three research objectives: to examine the nature of cultural practices in Mogadishu Somalia, to determine the status of female Education of Somalia and to establish the significant relationship between Somali culture and female education in Somalia. This study adopted a cor relational design based on the quantitative
approach. The questionnaire was the main methods used for data collection. For this purpose, the questionnaire was administered. Quantitative data was analysed based on the SPSS descriptive statistics and Pearson correlations test while the interpretive analysis was used for qualitative data,The findings show that Somali local cultural practices in form of early marriage, lack of socio-emotional support and discrimination of female children are the main factors hindering female education attainment in terms of access, enrollment, retention and literacy natures. On the other hand, Religious gender perspectives have been rightly interpreted to allow women acquisition of knowledge through either formal or informal means. It was further revealed that access to education is harder for girls whose mothers are strong cultural believers according to tradition. Older daughters typically find they are unable to start or continue school because their domestic labour is needed at home
to replace their mother’s. The study concluded that the nature of female education is still
low and the major factor attributing to this are the cultural practices hence addressing cultural values and improving female literacy is an essential step towards addressing female socio-economic development. The study recommends that; the government of Somalia should organize awareness education campaign of a girl child to the community and equal opportunities to both boys and girls should be emphasized in school. Practices like female circumcision, early marriage should be completely banned and strict laws and
punishments should be enforced to protect women from violations. The government should arrange more scholarships from the lower nature to upper or higher institutions like universities for female students than boys to enable them compete favorably on the labour market with the required qualifications.
Description
A thesis presented to the college of higher degrees and research center in partial fulfillment of the requirement
for the Degree Master of Arts in Development Studies Kampala International University Kampala, Uganda
Keywords
Somali culture, Female education, Mogadishu Somalia