Factors Affecting Gender Disparity in Muslim Education in India

Muslims occupy the second largest share in India’s population after Hindus. Therefore, India’s overall economic growth and development are largely dependent on the progress of this community. Muslims, by and large, have remained backward in attaining education so far, and the pace of their educational development is quite slow. The situation is even worse for Muslim women. This gives rise to gender disparity in education and raises concerns over the formulation, implementation and monitoring of government policies and programmes directed towards the betterment of this community. This study aims to empirically evaluate the effect of some socio-economic and demographic variables; particularly household consumption expenditure as a proxy for household income, on current education attendance levels of Muslims using a sample of individuals aged 5–17 years from the National Sample Survey, 68th round Employment–Unemployment survey, 2011–2012. In addition, this article is also an attempt to examine the effect of these factors on the gender gap in education of Muslims. Results from the empirical analysis show that members of this community are less likely to attend any educational institution if they belong to the lower income status household and are more likely to attend if they belong to the upper income status household. In comparison to Muslim girls, Muslim boys are more likely to attend school if they belong to rich families. In contrast, in poor Muslim families, girls are more likely to attend school than boys. Several other socio-economic and demographic factors also affect current education participation of Muslim children. Besides other factors, if on the one hand, children’s growing age and number of children in the household increase gender gap, then knowledge of Internet operation and presence of a female household head help in reducing gender gap in current attendance level of Muslim children in India.