The Girl Effect: A Brief Introduction and Some Resources by Danae P.

Danae Paterson

Health 3 - Kamonyi District, Southern Province

Women and girls around the world, in every society, face a wide-ranging plethora of challenges and obstacles.  They also possess an enormous strength, and a significant potential for incredible growth, change, and determined success.  Gender plays a key role in a great deal of development, and as Peace Corps Volunteers we are in no way immune to witnessing the enormous piece of the puzzle that gender can play in our own in-the-field experiences.  In fact, there are so many major angles of development through which gender can play a crucial role, it can be very difficult to decide even where to start.

One key challenge that plays a direct part in many Peace Corps experiences is education.  Many of us work directly or indirectly in this field.  To put it quite simply, involving girls in education is a critically impacting opportunity for sparking a multi-layered potential for positive change.  One method of considering the importance of linking young girls to education is called the Girl Effect.

The basic premise behind the Girl Effect is that we have a problem on our hands.  And that we also have a solution.

Worldwide, gender discrimination is a serious issue.  Especially, gender issues that relate directly to education for girls and tie to serious health and economic issues – and not only for girls, but also for the immediate families that women are members of.  Consider the following:

• Of the world’s 130 million out-of-school youth, 70 percent are girls (1) .
• In Sub-Saharan Africa, 60 percent of girls with no schooling are married before the age of 18, versus only 10 percent of their educated counterparts (2)
• 14 million girls aged 15-19 give birth in developing countries each year (3).
• Medical complications from pregnancy are the leading cause of death among girls aged 15 to 19 worldwide (4)

In sum, in parts of the world, the less education a girl receives, the earlier she marries.  The earlier a girl marries, the sooner and younger she bears children – the younger she is when giving birth, the more likely she is to contribute to maternal mortality statistics.  Education can in this way be linked to maternal mortality.  This has a direct affect not only on the girl in question, but also on the health of her children.

Now consider this:

o    When a girl in the developing world receives seven or more years of education, she marries four years later and has 2.2 fewer children (5)

o    Research in developing countries has shown a consistent relationship between better infant and child health and higher levels of schooling among mothers (6)

From a straightforward comparison of these two sets of information, the problem is clear: girls who have less education are more likely to marry young, and have an increased likelihood of bearing more children, earlier – and this contributes significantly to high maternal mortality rates.  Inversely, a girl who has increased education under her belt is more likely to delay both marriage and childbearing.  This has a twofold health affect – not only extremely positive for the mother, but also for the child of that better-educated mother.  In this way, increased education for girls has a clear tie with health benefits for multiple players.

In addition, girls’ education has a lasting economic impact.  Study after study has shown that further access to education for girls is one of the most dynamic ways to fight poverty.  According to co-author of Half the Sky Nicholas Kristof, “Schooling is . . . a precondition for girls and women to stand up against injustice, and for women to be integrated into the economy.”

Consider:

o    An extra year of primary school boosts girls’ eventual wages by 10 to 20%.  An extra year of secondary school, 15 to 25%. (7)

o    When women and girls earn income, they reinvest 90 percent of it into their families, as compared to only 30 to 40% for a man. (8)

Increased education is shown to improve a woman’s ability to generate income, and it has been shown time after time that women use their income in a manner that benefits a wide net of people: their families.  Also consider, women with income at their disposal often finance the education of younger relatives, and save enough of their pay to boost national savings rates.  A widespread rippling affect is not difficult to see here – all resulting from just a few years’ increase in a girl’s education.

According to the Girl Effect, “Girls who stay in school are more likely to stay healthy and avoid HIV, marry when they choose, avoid early pregnancy, and raise a healthier family, and break out of the cycle of poverty.” 

Education, it is clear, has the potential to create significant and overlapping impact in a dynamic way.

As PCVs, these are realities that many of us have experienced on a daily basis.  So what can we do?  The GAD Committee was created, in part, to help PCVs find creative ways to answer this very question.  To combine our not inconsiderable collective experience, innovation and inspiration to focus on girls’ education, empowerment, confidence building, involvement in IGAs and savings workshops with women specifically in mind, and much more.  There are many ways for PCVs to be involved in this aspect of their service, and education is just one piece of a large and complex puzzle.

This, of course, has been a brief and simple foray into to a multi-layered and complicated series of issues.  If you’re interested in learning more, feel free to check out some of these resources, and feel free to send any of your own to your GAD representative to create a larger compilation!

• girleffect.org – a media-based webpage that discusses the Girl Effect phenomenon in more detail, and has a list of its own resources
• Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl Wudunn (copies are floating around Peace Corps)
• www.care.org - we have CARE in Rwanda! CARE is increasingly focusing on women and girls.
• www.engenderhealth.org focuses on reproductive health issues in the developing world
• www.thp.org - the Hunger Project – focuses on empowerment of women and girls to end hunger
• www.icrw.org International Center for Research on Women – emphasizes gender as the key to economic development
• www.womenforwomen.org - Women for Women International – connects women sponsors with needy women in conflict or postconflict countries (we have a Women for Women center in Rwanda, in Butare, where frequent meetings and workshops on topics related to gender in Rwanda are held – could be a great resource for gender-based projects!)

Some additional resources for “quick facts” related to challenges that many girls throughout the world are facing:

(1)     Human Rights Watch, “Promises Broken: An Assessment of Children’s Rights on the 10^th Anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1999

(2)     Informational Center for Research on Women, Too Young to Wed, 2007

(3)     UN Population Fund, State of the World Population, 2005

(4)     UN Children’s Fund, Equality, Development, and Peace 2000

(5)     UN Population Fund, State of the World Population 1990

(6)     Maternal Education and Child Survival: A Comparative Study of Survey Data from 17 Countries” Social Science and Medicine, 1993

(7)     “Returns to Investment in Education: An Update” Policy Research Working Paper, World Bank, 2002

(8)     “Women’s Rights Vital for Developing World,” Yale, 2003

Reflecting on International Women’s Day by. Gelsey H.

Gelsey Hughes

ED 2, Kamonyi District, Southern Province

This year I celebrated International Women’s Day by grading papers.  Despite it being an official holiday in Rwanda, it felt like any other day.  Most of the women I knew went about their usual business, pausing only for a few hours in the evening to honor the occasion with a Fanta.  Like World Earth Day, women’s day felt like a call to action that required no response.

When one of my male coworkers joked that there ought to be an international day for men too, I found myself wondering, what for?  So men can have a special day to convene in town and drink Fanta?  It occurred to me that I had no idea what we were meant to be celebrating. 

I decided to do some research.

International Women’s Day is both a day for celebrating the accomplishments of women worldwide and a day for promoting gender equality and human rights.  It originated as a national holiday in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, when a growing labor movement and an increasing number of female wage earners lead to more and more political mobilization on the part of women.  An abridged timeline:

1909: The Socialist Party of America proposes a national holiday honoring women workers the wake of a garment workers’ strike in NYC.

1910: In Copenhagen, Socialist International establishes an International Women’s Day for promoting equal rights for women, especially women’s suffrage. 

1911: International Women’s Day (IWD) is celebrated in Denmark, Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

1914: IWD is officially recognized in the USSR.  Around the world, IWD is marked by antiwar protests and political rallies.

1977: The UN adopts a resolution proclaiming March 8^th as an international day for women’s rights.  IWD is officially recognized as an international holiday.

Today, IWD is celebrated most prominently in developing countries.  In some places, IWD is a day for honoring the women in our lives whom we love.  In other places, it is a day for reflecting on the unique struggles of women.  In my village IWD is a day for taking a Fanta, but that counts as a small upheaval.  It might not sound like much, but around here women don’t go out for Fanta on any other day. 

Sources:

http://www.un.org/en/events/womensday/

http://www.un.org/en/events/womensday/history.shtml

http://www.internationalwomensday.com/about.asp

http://www.rferl.org/content/womens_day_feature_soviet_socialist_origins_100th_anniversary/2330712.html

Gender and Development: Rwandan Women and Post-Genocide Development by Sarah D.

Sarah Doyle

ED 2 -- Bugesera District, Southern Province

Note: This academic paper was originally published on SOMA -- the quarterly journal of PC/Rwanda -- in August 2011. Sarah also wrote her UG thesis on Rwanda in Gender Studies at JHU. 

 

Introduction

The issue of gender is extremely important to the study of international development today. In the past the issues of gender and development were considered separately, but as we developed from ‘women in development’ (WID) to ‘gender and development’ (GAD), the two have been considered as interconnected pieces to the puzzle of development and social, economic, and political change. As the Northern hemisphere has become less vocal in the international gender debate, the South has stepped up and has changed the gender and development approach to one based on the acquisition of rights. This change to a ‘rights-based’ approach has allowed for significant mobilization and change in transnational movements, the State, and productive work.

In the case of women in Rwanda, they have experienced unique and unforeseen gains in the three aforementioned areas of debate (transnational movements, State, and productive work) that both support and depart from the beliefs of scholars in the field of gender and development. Though they still are not equal to men, Rwandan women have improved their position in all public sectors of society, which is more of an exception than the rule when discussing the success of women’s transnational movements, presence in government, and progress in productive work. Though Rwandan women are still expected to maintain their gendered roles in the private sphere, the home, they have been afforded the opportunity to challenge gender roles and responsibilities in the public sphere, notably in government and business.

A Graduation Celebration Gone Wrong by Pamela B.

Pamela Boulware

H3, Muhanga District, Southern Province

Imagine March 16, 2012, graduation, celebrations and alcohol. Some may say this is a wonderful combination but I witnessed differently. On this faithful evening around 5pm, a group of graduates, from the Catholic Institute of Rwanda in Gitarama, and their families gathered to celebrate their graduation at a small but enticing restaurant in town. One group particularly caught my attention. There was one young man, assumed the graduate, based on his graduation attire, with family and a group of about seven of his friends. The restaurant had music playing softly in the background but when people started dancing, the volume was turned up. I must admit, I tapped my toes to the beat from time to time.

There was one female waitress floating from table to table taking orders for mostly drinks. The restaurant creates a lounge feel so there were no buffets. She greeted me many times showing her enthusiasm on seeing me in what had been a while to her but maybe two weeks max. When our conversation finished she left me to return to take care of the graduation party. After a few more rounds of beer and maybe an hour and a half later the party asked for their bill. After being focused on my work for a portion of that hour and a half, I look up to find the waitress pointing her finger at the graduate, now seated at a small table with an older woman and a man. He began to slap the waitress’ hand out of his face. The older man tried to move the waitress back while the woman looked on. The graduate rose and began a full out argument with the waitress swinging the bill in her face. I presume the argument was about the bill.

Another young man wobbled over to the argument with beer in hand and joined the argument. The waitress turned to him and began pointing her finger at him as well. I must admit the waitress was holding her own in the argument and did not seem intimidated at all. The graduate walked away to rejoin his table while his friend and the waitress continued their spat. The waitress then walked away. She return a little while later with what presumed to be her boss. The boss seated himself at the table with the graduate and his party; they talked for over thirty minutes. The issue apparently did not get resolved because the graduate jumped up and called someone on his cell phone. A little while later three men came to speak with the boss. The waitress carried on helping other people but every time she walked by something was said to her by the graduate and his party but one comment must have rubbed her the wrong way because she began pointing and yelling again. The boss put an arm between the pair but that was no help as the waitress continued her spat.

One of the men that were called by the graduate removed his jacket and shoved the boss while yelling and pointing at the waitress. The boss kept his cool but then the man turned to direct his anger toward the waitress and jumped at her, as if to hit her. The boss was able to stop the action as he caught the man. The graduate held the man back along with two other men. The waitress gave a ‘come on’ gesture with her hand and was yelling. She showed no fear and did not back down. The man kept jumping at her. Then a friend of the graduate came up behind the waitress and pushed her in the back. That’s when she turns around and slapped him in the face. The bartender came and subdued the friend before he could retaliate.

To make a long story short, one of the men paid the bill and they left. Let us take a step back. One young girl held her own against men that thought they could intimidate her by crowding her space and yelling. When she was met with force she retailiated with no fear in her eyes. No other woman working in that restaurant attempted to restrain her or come to her defense. When they were met with harsh words from an individual from the party, they said a few words then walked off. I must say, I was shocked that so many men were out to get the waitress over a bill, initially. Of course I do not know what all was said during these arguments but they did not show any sympathy for the waitress, but treated her as if she were a man they were arguing with. I want to be as bold and say that alcohol had a play on the escalated actions toward the waitress but I can’t be sure, as I was an onlooker that eventually left. The actions of the wait staff leaves a question of mine unanswered. Here, if a woman were seen in an argument, being pestered by or in a fight with a man would she be helped or just stared at? What do you think and why?

Joel Atwood

ED2, Gakenke District, Northern Province

Last year I had the pleasure of participating in Camp BE. A camp for boys that basically takes the same concepts used to promote gender equality and educates the boys. The interesting thing about this is that the focus on the camp becomes less about girls being empower and more about how boys empower girls.

BE Camp in Northern Province, 2011

The camp ran fairly smoothly and was a really positive experience for the boys. I think they really learned a lot. We did many of the same activities and lessons using them from the girls camp but tweaked them so that they where relevant for boys. We also had a lot of interesting discussions about how to promote girls and how to support girls in the spirit of equality.

Some problems that we did run into was issues with money. Some students lied about how much it took for them to come to the camp and/or claimed they took or did take very expensive personal transportation when they where suppose to take cheaper forms of transport (ie: buses). This was a problem we dealt with on a case by case basis. However most of the boy's if not all of them wanted more money then we had planned to give them. A solution to this problem would be a predefined about of money that a student would get and would sign for so when they asked for more money at the end we could go back to this form.

Overall it was a good experience and I hope to improve on what we learned for the next camp.

PCVs and HCN Facilitators for GLOW/BE Camp in Northern Province

Photos by Genevieve Williams, ED2, Musanze District, Northern Province