Education was never a question for me. There was no alternative to school, I had to go to college so I could make something of myself. Eckerd College isn’t exactly a typical school, either. Our campus is beautiful, I can study macroeconomics on the beach and convince my professors to have class outside occasionally. I’ve been given the opportunity to be an RA, which gives me a single room and free housing. I personally know the staff in our Career Resources department, the department which helped me find two internships last summer. In this environment, it’s easy to forget that nearly 39 million girls around the world aren’t even enrolled in primary school.
There’s a Chinese proverb that says “Women hold up half the sky.” Anyone who’s familiar with the concept of child birth can attest to the importance of women, but even more important is the education of women. It wasn’t until I took Middle Eastern Political Economy last year that I realized just how intertwined a country’s growth is with female education.
Let’s start with the basics: primary school enrollment. According to the 2010 edition of “The World’s Women: Trends and Statistics,” a United Nations report, 72 million children “of primary school age” are not enrolled in schools. 54 percent of those children are girls.
There are simple reasons that they are not in school. According to the Action Aid group, families must pay for enrollment in primary schools in 92 countries. Money alone deters the families, and in societies where men are valued higher than women, sons receive priority in schooling, leaving the daughters at home uneducated. In some cases, families find it more beneficial to have daughters at home tending to domestic needs. In other cases, societies, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, dictate that women are not fit to have an education.
This is where those societies strap a ball and chain to the leg of their development. Educate your women and both social and economic improvement follows. In social terms, the longer a woman is in school, the longer she delays marriage. In many societies, this means delaying the age of child birth.
In “A Political Economy of the Middle East” by Alan Richards and John Waterbury, the claim is made that female education is “the key” to child mortality rates. Education of girls at a young age gives them access to information about pre-natal care, as well as education about diseases. Countries with higher enrollment rates of females have shown significant improvement in child mortality rates. Trends also often show that as a family’s income increases, the number of children they have decreases.
Economically, increasing literacy, Richards and Waterbury argue, helps increase labor and productivity. Individually, literate women have more job opportunities than illiterate women, allowing for higher incomes. This, in turn, will both help a country industrialize, as well as impact a country’s GDP. A higher standard of living and life expectancy follow.
It’s easy to read about issues like this in an article and to take a stance supporting the education of women. It’s helpful to be in that mindset. But I urge you to become involved, even minimally in an organization that actively impacts women’s education globally. If you would like to become involved, please visit the Campaign for Female Education’s website, www.camfed.org to support schooling for girls in Africa, or The Girl Fund at www.thegirlfund.org, a United Nations sponsored program aimed at education, health care and protection from violence.