CEDAW/C/PHI/4 English Page 45 available and sensitive to working women's needs, could greatly lessen their burden and enable them to direct their energies towards productive work. 162. While encouraging developments have been noted on the participation of women in decision-making, their disproportionate representation in top-level positions in all areas affecting people's lives continues to be evident. This is particularly observed in the education sector where women constitute the majority of the schoolteachers but are not equitably represented as the positions go up. The continuing gender inequalities in access to power and decision-making need to be addressed to improve the status of women. 163. To ensure that gender becomes a critical variable in education and human resources development, there is a need for a continuing consciousness-raising and orientation programme among education agents (e.g. policy makers, school administrators, teaching and non-teaching personnel) for the promotion of more gender-sensitive educational goals, objectives, policies and programmes. 164. There is also need to look into why female teachers have limited opportunities for professional growth, or why they cannot avail themselves of such opportunities. Although it has been repealed as a policy, women with children below two years of age are not encouraged to go on scholarship or training abroad. Likewise, female teachers find it difficult to participate in local training programmes because they are hardly able to balance their time between reproductive and productive functions. The need to protect the husband's ego and the perception that wives' educational attainment should not exceed that of their husbands are also among the critical factors restricting women's pursuit of professional growth through further studies and training. 165. Another area of concern is the need to incorporate and take into account the gender perspective in teachers' training programmes. It has been noted that teachers are unable to participate in these programmes because the training design (e.g. time and location of training) does not take into account women's multiple responsibilities. Moreover, there is a need for a systematic, basic and in-depth training on women's studies for teachers and career counsellors. 166. The need to strengthen the central gender and development focal point and create similar mechanisms at the subnational level for the education and human resources development sector is a continuing concern that policy and decision makers ought to address. 167. There is a need to determine the extent of implicit and explicit discrimination that women continue to experience while enroling in some schools. The education needs of young women who are forced to drop out for such reasons as unplanned pregnancy, needs to be brought into focus and made the object of studies and appropriate responses. 168. Institutional mechanisms and structures such as gender and development focal points and non-governmental organizations/networks across the country need to be established or strengthened to ensure that the education and human resources development sector is gender-responsive. While such mechanisms already exist, they are confronted with problems of inadequate funding or weak structures as these are simply added to existing functions. It has also been /...