Focusing on Third World countries, this book examines the undereducation of women, causes of women's undereducation, changes in female education patterns, and the significance of such changes in society and in women's lives. The book consists of four parts, comprising different chapters written by social scientists, researchers, and educators. Part one is concerned with factors that affect women's access to education and their survival rates in school (including ethnicity, social class, sex role division of labor in the family and society, educational policy, and school availability). Part two investigates how far schools encourage girls to succeed in academic life, whether schools prepare girls for society the way they do boys, whether sex differentiation in schooling varies across countries, and how sex differentiation in educational practices shapes schooling outcomes for girls. Parts three and four consider the outcomes of education for women in the labor force and for mothers, and address the questions of whether education enables women to mediate the impact of the family on their economic and social roles, and whether education substantively affects women's family lives. A concluding chapter explores new directions for research on the education of women. A bibliography of materials on women and schooling in the Third World is included. (Author/MJL)