The schoolgirls, however, stressed the importance of education for both men and women. Although part of Tierra Viva's campaign aims at encouraging parents to send their daughters as well as their sons to school, the organization also works to change the kind of education girls receive. According to Tierra Viva, formal education in Guatemala tends to reinforce traditional roles for men and women instead of broadening their perspectives. An analysis of the educational materials used both in urban and rural areas of the country found that all the texts examined contained sexist images and messages. While roughly half of the nation's boys enroll in school, less than 30 percent of girls do, according to the U.N. Development Program.
Illiteracy is seven percent higher among women than men.
Celebration of the United Nation's International Literacy Day September 8 spotlighted the persistence of illiteracy in the country. For many years, national efforts to eradicate illiteracy went for naught, mainly because of the lack of political will, the report states. This failure is seen in low literacy rates in Guatemala in comparison with the rest of Latin America. Economic and social inequalities, regional disparities as well as political, linguistic and geographical factors contribute to much higher illiteracy rates in some areas and among some groups than others, it goes on. Seventy-seven percent of illiterate Guatemalans live in the countryside and 56 percent are women.