Reducing the gap: government efforts to advance girls' education in colonial Cyprus, 1878-1960

As was the case in many countries around the world, in Cyprus, up until the first decades of the 20th century, universal – and surely compulsory – education was not a given right but, rather, a privilege. When the British arrived on the island, in 1878, the illiteracy rate exceeded 75 percent while, among the female population, the percentage was a shocking 97.5 percent. During British rule, girls and women were to benefit significantly from the Government’s education decisions; these decisions reduced the gap between boys’ and girls’ school attendance, a tendency that continued after the island’s independence. This paper focuses mostly on the Greek-Cypriot community, although frequent references to the Turkish-Cypriot and other communities are made throughout the text; the entire subject is approached mainly from a historical, rather than an educational, perspective.This work has been partly supported by the project that has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 739578 (RISE – Call: H2020-WIDESPREAD-01-2016-2017-TeamingPhase2) and the Republic of Cyprus through the Deputy Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy