What Gender Gaps In Education Spending Look Like For Rural Lao Families, A Teacher Explains
The tin roof of our one-room upper secondary school was drumming so hard last month I could barely hear Uncle Som, the village headman, when he leaned over my desk to hand over a crumpled envelope of kip. I brushed rain off the enrollment form and counted out the cash: 180,000 kip, about $9. Enough for one student’s uniform, textbooks, and three months of bus fare to the district campus for the days we don’t have a local teacher. The form listed two kids: 14-year-old Kham, the only son, and 16-year-old Nok, his older sister. “We send Kham,” Uncle Som said, folding his big calloused hands on the desk. “Nok can stay and help with the coffee harvest this year.”
I’ve been teaching and working with community education programs in northern Laos for four years, and that’s a conversation I have at least a dozen times every enrollment period. When I first started, I kept a casual tally of education spending per kid in the 42 families I work with closely. I quickly saw the pattern: out of 21 families with both boys and girls of secondary school age, 15 spend at least 30% more each year on their sons’ education than their daughters’. That gap adds up fast. It’s not just tuition—primary education is technically free in Laos, but all the extra costs add up: bus fare to the nearest secondary school, extra tutoring for national exams, new uniforms instead of hand-me-downs, even pocket change for snacks so kids don’t have to walk home halfway through the day to eat. Girls almost always get the short end of that stick.
Two weeks after enrollment, I walked 45 minutes down the muddy trail to Nok’s family farm to talk to her mom. Nok was sitting on the porch weaving rattan mats to sell at the weekly market, her old school notebook tucked under the house, pages already stained with mold from the rainy season. She told me she liked biology, wanted to be a primary school teacher in the village someday. When I asked if she wanted to come back to school, she just shrugged and said her brother needs the spot more. “When he gets a government job in the district, he’ll build our parents a new house,” she said. It was a line I’d heard dozens of times, matter-of-fact, not angry or sad.
A lot of people I talk to in city education offices or back in my home country assume this gap just comes from old cultural ideas that girls don’t need education. But that’s not the whole story, not for most of these families. Most are living on less than $2 a day, and when you can only afford to send one kid to school, you’re going to pick the one that you think will give your family the best return on that investment. The norm for generations here has been that boys stay with their family, or get stable formal jobs that send money home, while girls marry and move to their husband’s village, so any money you spend on her education benefits another family. It’s a calculated choice, not a cruel one, even when it’s hard to see.
The gap shrinks a lot in cities, where I worked for a year before moving north. Urban families almost always spend about the same on boys and girls, because both are expected to go to university and get jobs that support their original families later on. So it’s less a country-wide cultural problem and more a problem of rural poverty tied to long-standing gender expectations.
I’ve learned over the years that small, consistent actions move the needle more than big, one-time programs. For example, as a local teacher, I make a point to visit any girl who drops out within three days, not wait until the end of the semester like a lot of schools do. Last year, we had three girls drop out in the first month because their families couldn’t cover bus fare. I talked to the village agricultural cooperative, which sets aside a small amount of money every year for community needs, and we worked out a payment plan where the families pay back half the fare with a portion of their coffee harvest at the end of the year. All three girls came back.
Another thing that works is bringing local women who finished school back to talk to village families at the monthly meeting. Last year, we had a nurse who grew up in this very village come eat sticky rice with everyone and talk about how she sends $100 home to her parents every month, more than most men with government jobs send. After that meeting, six more families signed their daughters up for next year’s enrollment. Targeted small scholarships for girls, just enough to cover bus fare and textbooks, also work a lot better than general aid that goes to the school. Most of these families don’t need a lot of money, just enough to cover that extra gap so they don’t have to choose between kids.
This year, we have eight more girls enrolled in upper secondary than we did three years ago when I started. That’s progress, even slow progress. But last week, I saw 10-year-old Lin, Nok’s younger sister, drawing pictures in class. She drew herself in a white nurse’s uniform, standing next to a clinic. Kham, her brother, drew himself as a mechanic with a blue truck. Their parents still haven’t said if they can afford to send both when Lin is old enough for secondary. We check in with them every few months, remind them that there are small scholarships available if they need it. We can’t force the choice, and we can’t make the harvest better if the rains don’t come. But we keep the spot open, and we keep talking. That’s all we can do right now.
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