[Flora Lado] Yeah, thank you all for coming for this presentation. So I'm
already being introduced, I'll just go ahead with the
presentation. So I have this online. I will talk on the
background about South Sudan and then I will
introduce the topic and then i will talk on
cultures and family practices with regards to upbringing of the
children boys and girls in their families
and then i will also elaborate on the impact of those practices on girl's
education. that will follow with the literacy
in South Sudan how much people are illiterate and those who are literate
and what's the percentage of girls to to
make so i will also talk on
the family support for the girls to be educated
and how they can play a very big role in development
and after that i will uh highlight all my experience as
one of the ladies who cross in that environment and how
i was able to manage to go to school and finish and
progress and also that one my family have a very big role in that
So South Sudan is actually in Africa.
It's the newest country in the world. So we had our independence in 2011.
After several wars we have the first world war
the first civil war in 1955 to 1972 and the main reasons was
because we were seeking for a representation
in the government of sudan uh by that time
and uh also we were seeking for autonomy uh governance in the part of south sudan
so then uh after that agreement of 20 of
1972 things didn't work well so we were not
satisfied with that agreement and still a war broke in 1983
and it ended with a peace agreement in 2005. so
now we have south sudan but because of all marginalization
and less representation from 1956
when sudan had independent from the colonialists we only have
three universities until 2005. that shows how we have been marginalized from
privileges of education and if we talk about
primary schools and secondary school all these
lower level schools we actually have very few schools so
that really can show that that can have an impact
on how many people are literate and how much of
illiterate so let's look at literacy rate all over the world so
uh sorry we have the dark blue color is the highly uh
literate countries so we have the america and then some
part of our south america we have the asean countries and australia and
part of africa which is south africa these are highly educated
populations the range is between 90
and 100 percent of the population are literate
so when we see uh in africa i wish i can half a month here
so if we see here you can stand up okay yeah so if we see here
uh actually most of the people in these countries
and these are sub-saharan countries are the illiterate the literacy rate is
between 20 and 30 which is really very low
and you can see south sudan is one of those countries so
we have a literacy rate between 30 and 27 it fluctuates a lot we
don't have proper statistics because uh the last
statistics done in the country was in 2008 so
you can find different reports on that but it it's below
40.
so uh that means there are so many other factors
uh regardless the the fact that we have been marginalized by the north
we are not given enough privilege to go to school and not enough
schools facilities i consider culture and family practices are some of
the impact which affect girl education or women
education in south sudan so
this is actually in line with the way the families train their
children or in the upbringing from early young age to
the adult because i can see the very important part of life of a child
to frame the child for to be ready for the future is when they're still
young so the way we bring children when they are young
can reflect how they can be in the future
so we have traditional families though nowadays there are families who
uh treat girls and boys in the house the same treat them
uh like yes children they are given all the chances
to do what they want to do and they're given
equal roles but it's still the practice of
oriented training or upbringing is existing
and so this includes uh for a guns they tell girls otherwise only to to be
in the kitchen if there is any uh attention
a family member or a baby in the house needs people prefer to call a girl to
when i can do those things than just anyone who is available for
example if there is a visitor a family member can call a
girl wherever she is come we have a visitor here come and
thank them so this brings um
understanding in the mind of the girl and the boy that
oh this type of work is specifically for a girl and that have an impact
so for the boys they give them hard jobs and they tell them you are
very strong these are type of things you must do the girls are weak they cannot
do it we have good example of
countries i watch a movie last year or this year
the eagle countries so had that father not give that girl
the free will choice to do what she wants
we could not find that girls can hunt using eagles so we should not
like tell children in the early age that this is what you are fit for
and this is where you are not fit for so those things have all
impact and also they can impact uh on what a girl we choose in the future
so in our culture is something which is a little bit i don't know if other
countries has they believe that boys are killers of
the family and they will continue the lineage
of the family so if you have all girls this family is going to die
it's going to disappear in the future because all these girls will be married
out and then no one will represent this
family i just wonder if they go deep and try
to analyze further because in my culture once we get marriage uh we
don't change our names so we still carry our family next like my name is flora
ioha severinolado my father's name and ladu is my
grandfather's name so i still carried wherever i got married i still
is they call me so they still know where i come from
so they don't look into that and this kind of things
all have impact on our girl upbringing and how she feels about
herself so they also
tend to my girls or for the other purpose
and that can be in early ages as 12 age so it depends on what is the main
intention but that's one of the practices so like we
have this girl she's in refugee camp this is from
unhcr reporter 2016.
she just said i know it will be tough but i love science and maths and
believe in myself so this girl at this age is now half that
feeling because of the way how she was brought up that
maths and science is tough and it's for male
and all those kind of things so she also went on and said in my culture people
believe that girls should stay at home and raise children i want to break the
record and prove that girls have a future
so you see because of all those culture and family practices
this girl is growing with that ideology and if she's not strong now she's strong
because she comes out and say that's what the culture says but i want
to break the record it's maybe because she's exposed
because she moved out from her environment to the refugees come where
they they see different things on the way from home to the refugee camp
she might have seen a lot of changes a lot of women
are working a lot of girls going to school so
it gives her courage but those who are at home and staying in the village
especially they cannot take these decisions so they
will grow up with the ideology that they have to be
at home and they have to just be there raising the
kids and owners
so uh we have also that society can detect that there is a
specific age they want a girl to get married so
if you don't get married at that time it might be a little bit challenging to
get money so those are some of the practices which
which actually can have impact so uh
as i have said before that girls can be given a lot of
household work even if the mother is there
all the family members are there but they culturally would like the girl
to be the one doing the world and with some intention
to prepare her to be a good wife in the future who can take care of all the
family members
so the other thing also because they think
that boys are pillars and can continue the lineage of the family
some families uh prefer to send boys to schools other
than girls because they said once this girl is
educated she's going to be belonging to another family not our
family so those kind of things are actually
uh have a lot of impacts and they can hinder a lot of progress in
women
so this has been recorded uh in cambodia south sudan and
mozambique so it's not only south sudan which is uh
practicing those uh kind of cultures there are a lot of countries and if we
do a lot of research we can find that there are still a lot
of communities practicing this kind of cultures
towards girls preferring to send boys to school other than
girls so this can also be due to some factors like the distance of
the school and then um the security
of that environment but why do we they are all kids at that age they are
young children so they are vulnerable to all those
risks if we consider risk is the factor but
because of those cultures people prefer to send
boys
so also the social economic
status of the family affects uh what how we choose to send children and
how many people are educated and how many children are
educated so if the socioeconomic status of the
family is so low so if it is uh
sorry so if we have
the families in this range of social economic status we will find that
there are more students who drop out of schools
because they may not be able to afford to send these
children to school but most of the time those who are dropped out
are guests because of the preferences people
do you prefer to send boys to guests so here it affects girls more than
boys and if the families are well off
they have salaries and they can sustain the families
there is a high probability of their children finishing school and
that can be both boys and girls because they can afford
either if the school is far it's risky to send
the children on food they can drive their children
or they can hire buses to protect the children so
i'm going to show you a clip from jazeera news
agency on the practices cultural practices which actually
is from south sudan
our pride
and my baby
so
what could i do no one was going to help me take care of my kids
and i can't do that alone so now my brother-in-law
is my husband
customary courts deal with community issues based on traditions
if you're the chief you should know the traditions of the tribes
there are no written laws we follow the rules of our ancestors
they tell us about it and we enforce it
so if we see from this clip there are two cases
there is a case of
so there are two cases a case of a girl and a woman
this girl has been used to solving a crime a murder crime which has been
caused by one of the men so why did they choose again why not anyone
if um if they prefer to
to pay or to solve the problem by human being
okay if it's a man which has been killed why not pay with a boy
and if it is a woman why not pay with it with a girl
so why don't we choose sex based on the death sentence why do we
only choose again so this all came back to what i have
said before about the culture and family practice is that
it doesn't matter because after all the girl will not
be the pin of the family will not carry the lineage of
their family so we can use her in whatever we want to
to do the other thing is this uh woman this this wife
her husband died but because she's not educated she has to take
any decision taken by the family because she is vulnerable at that stage she has
children she has no income she has been completely relying on her
husband for everything so she has to take any decision given by
the family even if she doesn't like that man
in some cultures or in some communities they will force
the woman but we have so many tribes in south sudan so the practice may differ
like in my tribe they will ask elegy to choose whoever
she wants to be with and if she doesn't want to marry from
this uh family she has the choice but uh
in other communities they can foster like what we have just
seen so all those have impact on
the women so number one is a a girl or women will feel
inferior because of all those upbringing that they are
not strong they are not capable of doing other things
the their main job is this one so all that oriented training will
make her feel inferior to her her brother or any other man
in the house and that will actually affect her
uh choice of career if she happens to be in the school so she will
think like some of these tough things like engineering geology going to the
field you have to work all the day climbing the mountains
either you are a civil engineer you have to climb the new
construction structures are so difficult for you
so even if she has that interest and she has
the capacity mental capacity to do that but because of that training she she she
will not choose that and that will affect actually
development in the country
and also she will feel less important like just this baby girl
she was used for solving a crime uh mother crime so she would feel like
i'm not that important because if i'm important i will not be selected from my
brothers to be used for this kind of things
and once we are all sitting there in the family
and if there is any household or work or if there is any visitor
who is coming and we just tell the girl to go and do those things
she will feel like her main goal to achieve
is to go to be a good married material she has to be a good wife in
the future because of the way we train her
she would think like she cannot do something better
than being a good wife a good mother and just she limits herself there
so all these cultures are actually having this impact and
it affects the uh the education so let's see some examples
of literacy uh we take afghanistan
russia saudi arabia i just picked this one based on
the percentage of highly literacy and low literacy so if we see
in afghanistan there is low literacy but most of the people
who are educated are male so here also that means in this country
we have the problem of women education taking south sudan
statistics uh south sudan uh women constitute 49
of the population so we are almost half half
populations so if we look into percentages we have age
15 plus most male are literate uh
the age of 15 to 24 most male are literate so this is age
between high school and uh from primary to high school
or to the university still we have male dominate the population of
literary people and when we see two children going to school
75 of them are male so still we have very low percentage of women and in
total from this house the population of south
sudan only 30 37 percent are literate which is
really very low
so if we see by number we find that 4
million women are illiterate compared to 3 million male
so and if we take compared to the total population
is like less than 1 million women are literate so this is really very low
ratio and that has to be improved
so women working in south sudan uh in mining engineering where i'm one of
them the population is really very low
we have only one university which offers geology and mining
and i have been the only female faculty since the university was opened
in 1972 i think so you can see how
that has impact the population of women in this sector
we have because in georgian mining we graduate
million female students every year though the percentage is too low
but most of them don't go and work in their fields so
around 15 to 20 the number of girls of women
in oil and gas and mining industry is very low in my country so
this is all because i say of all those cultures affecting their
choices to continue their career and going to
geology and mining and other things
in agriculture we have very few of them we have uh
around 15 percent or 17 percent of the faculty are
women in agriculture in universal people which is really very low
when we talk about science technology engineering and mathematics
we have some engineering women in electrical engineering mechanical
engineering but really the number is very low you
can count them you can know them all over the country so
this means there is a shortage there so if we compare that with the countries
where there is equal opportunity for both male
and female for any field they want to choose we still
we have the percentage of women in oil and gas industry is only 13
but that's far better than nothing
if we have if we see into women working in stem
it's about 24 percent which is good but we still need to increase that it's
not good number if we compare to how many men we have
so according to me family support is divided into two we have the parents to
bring the child from early age to
adult and then we have the partners to continue with them when
they are working so some of this support is to give them
equal treatment and then freedom of choice we should not
orient them to do whatever they we think is good for them let them
choose what they are able to do and we should give them
enough time to study and we should also encourage
them to go for further studies some families think that if their girls only
finish universities uh it's okay because now
they eliminate they blame that they do not send the
child to school but not that's not enough because we need them
to get more education and continue with their career
so what i would like to emphasize on is that people should
think of child success in a modern way in my community we train girls to be
successful traditional but also we should transfer that traditional train
to modern trend by sending them to school and let them continue
in their academics until when they finish and
be successful in the community contribute and
so with the partners they have to support them
with what they want and what they are doing
and assist them in the family roles because if
a woman is outside working and when she comes back home
and find that the household work is still pending there while the husband
has been there she will not feel good tomorrow when she
goes to work because she knows there are things at home not not being
done so partners should support women
in the household and also morally
so if we send all the girls to school uh we can reduce the population
of illiteracy in south sudan uh from 4 million to a reasonable
number and therefore women will be able to
contribute in development in either academia
in stem fields or in agriculture in politics now we have
governors we have women in parliament but
that's you can count them they're just so few i don't
i'm not happy with that little number uh we need a lot of them there
because they are actually part of the community if we have
part of the society which is not effectively contributing to
development it will affect the economy of the country
and own the society
so if we have women contributing effectively
in development they can be financially stable and that will
contribute to the socio-economic status of the family of the country and
if we have all the countries with strong socio-economic status
then the whole world will be at least
and so we can only do that through engagement
and we have to engage everybody in all the development issues
so as that can be done we will attend sustainable development and
that could be by equity participation of all social groups and
that will create riches for both male and female
and we can conserve the resources and be able to manage that
resources so having said that i would like to
share my personal experience that's me in the oil
fields in south sudan so i get all the support those mail are
there with me that area is very risky we have an
incident this year when uh international and local engineers
were kidnapped so it's really sometimes you
you may not feel comfortable even when we're doing the field work
we have to be like not be there too long especially in the remote areas this one
is within the facility so it's safe there
so because uh my parents were very strong
that even if we all grow in that society where
the preferment voice to girls and all those cultures but still my family
was able to give me equal treatment and upbringing to
anybody in the family i had enough time to do my homeworks
to go to school in time not delay but doing other homework household
things and by surgery they give me
they gave me the confidence that i'm just equal like anyone
any boy in the house so i have the choice to choose what i want and that's
why i went for geology and mining and when i
was choosing that i have a lot of resistance from outside
that this is men feel how i'm going to do with it in the
future when you get married and all those kind of things but because
from the family i didn't get that i was able to proceed so
when we support our children and their families they will have that
strong background and that will give them confidence before they take any
decision based on outside pressure they will
reflect to their families and they can concern the families which
is their background actually so we have to look into that
so i really didn't have any feelings that i'm less than a boy
so i may be different from male but i'm not less than them we have found
some boys who are really very delicate than some girls
so that does not mean that delicacy is only for ladies
not for boys so it depends on how physically strong you are and mentally
strong you are it's it's not sex based intelligence or
sex based in tran strength so depends on how
we have been brought up
and also it's uh one of the very important thing is
friendship between children and family that one gives the children a lot of
confidence in who they in who they are and
will have that strong link with the family and as
they take the family as their background and
backbone for all their decisions and their strengths
it's good to have that funding relationship
so with that i would really say thank you very much for coming and
i thank virginia tech a lot for giving me the chance to be a rolex student here
and have this chance to give this presentation i also
give my greatest thanks to the oired for inviting me to give this
presentation so if you have any comments any questions
you must welcome
yes so your mother given everything that you have said about how
girls women are socialized right um so your mother had to be um
standing up against that kind of socialization to give you the kind of
support that you're talking about am i right let me put this way my dad
because we have a society which is male dominant
my mother can be strong to give me this support but if my
father is not also a male who has changed that mindset
she uh he can impose on my mom yeah my mom
is very strong lady up to now she's still with me and she supports me a lot
she's my best friend in the world so we are when you see me with her you
think we are age mates but she's my mother i'm a her daughter
yeah she is
um so you talked a lot about the um different parts of education where there
are limitations for girls and i was wondering
if you found for yourself personally if there was a period of time where there
were the biggest hurdles to overcome and how
maybe what sort of tools or techniques you had
for overcoming so was it a primary school level was it
entering university working at a university where where did
from kindergarten to let me say to high school
there are good number of girls there so it was okay
i feel like okay we are many but when i went to the university
it was a little bit challenging because with my feel
we are very few i think in the class of 30
we were only five girls and i'm the only one from south sudan
and i had a group of boys we were working together with them
wherever we go in the campus we work together so they were nine boys
very nice nine boys they up to now they're still like my
brothers actually so that one helps a lot so i
feel a little bit comfortable but because i have good relationship
with my father i see all the men like my friends so it
was not that much big difference though i feel i
cannot do other things as a lady because this is
mostly name and the most challenging part of it is
when i was a faculty member because all of them
were men and i was the only lady it happens when
we go to the field trips it's a remote area so they will
they will struggle to provide a place for me
as a faculty but i just chose to be very simple and i usually tell
them please um don't get me a special
a special place just give me with the female students
and then with the female students when they start talking you know
students like talking about their stuff or
what is sitting happening and when they start talking
flores here and then i'll just tell them please
just feel like i'm one of you i'll not uh whisper blow to my
colleagues so just feel free and i do the same to the male when they
start to talk
their things as male 1 uh then the other one will pat on the
others like come on flores here and i just tell them please just feel
free so what i had to do with my colleagues is
i would just come to the office when it's uh
when i have lectures but most of the time
i either stay in the library or somewhere
where i have to give them their space you know because i should not
all the time tell them like just stay tuned yeah so i think that's where it's
a little bit challenging yeah can you tell us a little bit more
about and also whether you've seen as more
girls do get to enter education if you've seen some of the attitudes
towards dowry or marriage change a little bit
currently in town especially there are girls who will try
to to resist those false marriages and or organize marriages
but in some communities you don't have choice even if you are educated your
family can arrange for you they marry so it
still happens and
though even like it's just like most of the communities
they just have that pressure on girls and for you
to fit properly into the community so that people don't
label you like oh education has spoiled her now she cannot
listen and problems some guests give in yeah they still give him like we have
some women who are uh pg holders
some of them uh they just decide to stay at home because that's what they
agreed to do but my point is the whole nation
has spent their resources on educating you
the intention is not for you to have the purpose but is for you to contribute
in the development so we should differentiate between
being just going to school and practically contributing to the
development so it's not good idea to educate a girl
until when she has her phd like if i finish from here i'm going to sit at
home that would be a waste of resources yeah
he said because dowry is again it's a huge issue in india
and it plugs into those education and many other things
but i think what i wanted to ask you was in this case are you talking about my
big body the room's family to the girls family
because that is called bright wealth at least in anthropological
terms you know it's called regret and it's a different set of dynamics where
room's family face the bride's family is that what you're talking about when
you say married yeah yeah is the boy's family paying
for the girl's family yeah it's the other way around
yeah and what's the age that is manageable is there a law or anything
there is no law like from the government there is no
law actually the government is advocating
very hard to their families to send all their children to school but because
there is there is no family law and that really makes
that decision a little bit uh not very much uh
effective yeah legal age for marriage no it's it's families or culturally that
you should be they prefer to to marry their daughters before the age of 20.
yeah yeah
thank you very much for sharing your story with us i'm curious about at what
point in your life or what age did you decide that mining engineering
was the thing for you and how did that happen how did you get
into that field yeah that happened when my father went
to uk for his masters and he happened to
come across a mining movie from south africa
and he brought that home and when we were watching i was seeing
how people are mining and how the mind is so i just
picked that interest like oh i want to do something different
and then because my dad and my family did not have that
uh
character of imposing things what he told me is like have you watched the
movie properly you see how people are going and all those
things can say that i showed those but once people are
doing that i want to do it also so it was when i was in my high
i was in high school yeah before i finished high school yeah
thank you yeah
but um what insights or can you offer insight
into being a woman during her work struggles
um do any field work oh like either i mean you said that it's remote which is
risky but have you faced any other challenges
in a good work setting being a woman or being
in any other any other challenge
maybe it's because the way i was brought up
like i should be ready for anything uh i can i can say that by
saying one of these life stories my dad had a garden sugarcane garden so
every weekend whoever is in the house must go to the garden
and cut the grass and then ride their bicycles carrying the
sugarcane to the market to sell them so he didn't
say ladies should do this and males should do this
so i was well prepared from young age that
if i want to do something i can't do anything and then
the garden is so harsh it has no difference with the film
geology because it's a remote area there are snakes
there there are animals there it's not clean in the field is the same
we have the rocks we have the snakes there we have the animals there
sometimes we drink dirty water like water from the river
so there are those challenges but i just consider them like it's
environmental you know changes from home to the field world yeah but other
issues like if i had get any other difficulties
i did not really specifically for me or for
girls but of course as i have said before it's like they want to treat me
differently and all those kind of things yeah or and
it can also be because the fields are areas which has been
designated by universities that students should be taken there so i did
not go i have never been to a field trip
by myself though i had some good stories on other issues
i do consultancy work not only in in my field but in other fields also
i happen to to do consultancy work with the ddr
commission that is demobilization disintegration
and reintegration of ex competence so i have to go to areas which i have
never been there
i have to travel in the long distance which is very risky sometimes the
kettle owners do collage and in in in the time of crash
they cannot differentiate who is in that place
so i have to be just have that confidence
like since people are living here and people have been moving through this
path let me just go yeah
so maybe one more question and then remember we do have the room for another
30 minutes so if you want to come up and speak there you're
welcome to do that one more question oh wait somebody who doesn't spoke again
okay um i was wondering if there's anything that you've observed about
american culture and how americans treat men and women that you really liked or
disliked uh yeah i have been here for the last
uh four plus years yeah and what i have found here really very
different from
other environments i've been to is that here women are given all the choices
and freedom to do what they want in different environments
so we have women working in the mining engineering
fields women working in the agricultural fields
uh not in the office but actually in the field and that is really
very good i like that very much and then here also
nobody asked you about uh like in my field i have never found somebody here
asking me that why did you go for geology and mining
other than asking what motivates me but
not challenging my choice which is really something very cool
you know this i know that south sudan has
has been on the news uh in terms of tremendous turbulence between sort of
tribal issues you speak up people trying to
hear you in the background it has been politically in a situation
of tremendous conflict so has that made an impact
on you know its policies its literacy policies i mean how has
that impacted um many things that you were
talking about is it a time of change
how could it be yeah i can say that south sudan conflicts one of the
factors we contribute to that is the way intense it has grown is illiteracy
because uh it's very easy for me as an educated person
to convince a very big population of literary people
with wrong ideology because they believe in me they see me like they
are light and they believe in me that i have been
in so many different places so whatever i'm saying is uh true
so what i would like to say to my educated
south sudanese is that we should use our education in
a good way because those people can believe in anything
we say yeah okay great thank you thank you for
joining me
so hopefully you guys uh signed up and signed in and put your email if you
haven't please do something but we're going to send those of you who are on
there a link to a survey really quick
evaluation it really does help us be able to bring in speakers
um so we appreciate that and also the video of this talk and
all the previous talks are available on our website or directly on the library
website so you can and it'll take a couple weeks
to put it up but help you shut the bagels cream cheese
coffee all that and there is recycling outside for your water bottles if you
have watermelon and we hope we see you on tuesday
evening and thank you for coming have a great day