A Gender Analysis of the Vocational Roles in Adult Illiteracy Elimination (IE) Teaching Materials

In the last decade or more, IE work in China has made great progress and the illiteracy rate has declined substantially, but the task of eliminating illiteracy has not been fully completed.1 Most of China's adult women illiterates are in the rural areas, where the rate of illiteracy among adult women reaches 31 percent, almost three times higher than the rate among men. Most of these women are to be found in the impoverished regions of the West.2 Thus the work of eliminating illiteracy among adults should not only be focused on rural women in the impoverished regions, but must be closely linked with changes in their present vocational situation and in their impoverished state of existence. The state of poverty among these rural women has to do not only with regional and natural environments, but also with the social environment in which they live and their own attributes. The poorest people in the impoverished regions are illiterate women, and they should be given education to enlighten them and provide them with the basic personal and communal conditions for development and a better existence.