In hamlets throughout Africa 12-year-old girls are convincing their parents to allow them to postpone marriage until they graduate from high school to join the first generation of educated girls in their communities.
In rural Bangladesh girls’ enrolment in secondary school has doubled in less than 10 years. Mali’s community school programme ensures half the students are girls, local women are trained to become teachers and class hours fall in with the farming seasons.
Many of these girls do not even know they are part of a global drive to eliminate the gender gap in primary and secondary education by 2005. About 160 nations committed themselves to achieving this target three years ago in Dakar, Senegal, when the World Education Forum met. They also agreed to ensure a complete quality primary education for all children by 2015. These targets were included in the UN Millennium Development Goals, endorsed by 189 nations.
This week UN agencies, teachers’ unions, NGOs and citizens’ groups worldwide are spearheading a global lobbying effort to speed up progress on girls’ education. Much remains to be done. Nearly 60% of the world’s out-of-school children are girls and the gender gap has widened in recent years in some sub-Saharan African nations. For about 50 countries, the 2005 gender parity target remains a tall order at primary and at secondary levels.
Educating girls means lower infant and maternal mortality, smaller and healthier families, higher agricultural productivity and higher per-capita income. It is the single most effective preventive weapon against HIV/Aids.
Girls’ work outside the home is a big obstacle to their education. Within the home many must fetch water, help in the fields and care for siblings.
The cost of clothing, shoes and books is beyond the reach of poor families. There is also fear of sexual harassment on long walks to school or at school by male teachers or older students.
Progress often requires authorities to hire more female teachers. Bangladesh reserves 60% of primary teaching positions for women. Separate latrines, safe drinking water, free meals and small schools close to home boost girls’ attendance. Curriculums now often challenge the stereotypes about girls’ lives and responsibilities, and teach them about health, nutrition, hygiene and their environment.
The message is clear: education is synonymous with empowerment. Women, who make up two-thirds of the world’s 860-million illiterate adults, are learning to read and write in programmes that teach them how to manage credit, maintain water pumps and take on issues such as health and violence. Their new-found confidence makes them the strongest advocates of their daughters’ right to an education.
Reversing a decade-long fall in aid, industrialised nations have pledged to increase help for some of the poorest countries where ambitious education reforms are under way. Thirteen UN agencies are pooling efforts to help governments expand quality education for girls. Estimates of the aid required to implement universal primary education by 2015 range from $2,5-billion to $5,6-billion a year.
This is an edited version of the authors’ statement.
Matsuura is the UN Education Science and Cultural Organisation director general; Brown is an administrator at the UN Development Programme; Obaid is an executive director of the UN Population Fund; Bellamy is an executive director of the UN Children’s Fund; Wolfensohn is World Bank president; and Somavia is the International Labour Organisation director general