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 10th
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
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