Friday, July 8, 2016

Rural education, gender gaps, and Human Resource Development

Hola from Peru! This morning, we enjoyed our next to last breakfast at the IBIS hotel. Shortly after, we headed to Universidad de Pacífico where we first heard from Ms. Maria Isabel Ponce from the Ministry of Education.

Maria discussed education in rural areas as well as intercultural bilingual education (IBE) in Peru. It was very eye opening to hear the struggles that these children face by living in rural areas. There are 3 elements that seem to define what "rural" is. The first element is that the students in these areas live in extreme poverty. In addition to the negative impact of the elements of poverty, there are other elements that distinguish it as being a rural area, like being malnourished. More than half of the children in rural areas ages 0-5 are malnourished! How can we expect for them to function in school and get an education when they do not have the proper nutrients to survive?  The next factor is that the schools and the population itself is highly scattered in this area. There are no main conglomerates. All of these factors come together to portray the rural environment, although trying to describe what is rural in Peru is not an easy task! We also found out that almost half of the IBE schools have teachers that are not qualified to teach in bilingual languages!

The next speaker we heard from, Magrith Mena, talked about the gender inequality in education in Peru. We found out that men earn 30% more than their female counterparts in the labor market. There are currently many gender inequalities that need to be examined more deeply. One is that gender equality is much more complex than just "boys" and "girls."  Another limitation is that we try to homogenize all woman and all men. Other gaps like mother tongue is also very numerically different.  Non-poor students are ranked closely together in regards to gender, but those that are poor have a larger gap. The next indicator looks at the total population at secondary schools. The age higher than what we expect as the "norm" (2 years older than the expected age), in both rural and urban areas are the ones that are more vulnerable to experience a lag in education according to their age, is much higher in rural areas. If we keep watching only the national gaps of gender, we will not see progress. It is important to represent both male and females in regards to gender equality. Her presentation was wonderful and extremely interesting, especially for a group of all women!

After our two presenters, Dr. Aliaga and I grabbed lunch at Papachos. It was delicious! I had a "pepper" burger with cheddar, shoestring fries, mushroom, and all different kinds of sauces.

After lunch, we headed to the Catholic University to speak with Prof. Paloma Martínez-Hague, who is part of the Human Resources area at the school of business at the Catholic University of Lima.  I got to specifically speak with her about human resource development (HRD). We discussed about how HRD is currently in the practitioner stage. HR is much more informal in Peru. When discussing research, Peruvian companies are just dealing with survival and not really focused on the research. Peruvians look at life in the "short term" and they want their money now. They are less likely to invest in an HR team. It was very interesting to talk to her about HR and I was very glad to have this personal meeting with her!

For dinner, we went to a beautiful restaurant named La Rosa Nautica. They had a selection of seafood, chicken, and much more. It was right on the beach front in a beautiful scenery both inside and out.

~ Emily Griffin










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