Traditional Attitude of Parents and its Impact on Female Educational Attainment in Rural Hafizabad, Pakistan

Female education plays an important role in the societal progress and improvement. The literacy rate among rural females is 29% in Pakistan. In the developing countries like Pakistan, the traditional attitude towards women education is painstaking a keyobstacle in girls' schooling. In this study an effort had been made to explore the effect of traditional attitude on the educational attainment of rural females in Pakistan. The present study was conducted in the rural areas of the district Hafizabad. A sample of size 700 female children was selected using multistage random sampling technique. The fmal completed school grade was considered as the response variable. The analysis reveals that the girls, who belonged to households where the minds of the heads of the households were entrenched in the local cultural values, had lower levels of educational attainment as compared to the girls of households where the heads of the households were liberal. The study realizes the need to encourage the male heads of the households for schooling of their daughters as a short-run policy. Efforts to neutralize an innovative attitude towards females in the third world nations are the need of the hour. International organizations and States of the developing world should manage to promulgate the importance of female education.