134 Years is Too Long to Wait: How UNICEF is Accelerating Action for Girls and Women Now

Girls can do anything.

That shouldn’t need to be said today and, as a guy, I feel a little sheepish even writing the words. Girls and women don’t need me to tell them they can do anything. They prove it themselves every day.

Still, the phrase might be worth repeating anyway. Why?

Well, while it is true that girls can do anything, in too many places and still too often, they face barriers boys do not. The playing field isn’t as level as it should be. Girls are sometimes held back—not by who they are and what they can do—but by expectations, traditions and systems stacked against them.

That’s why I am always excited to see efforts that effectively break down those outdated expectations, traditions and systems. One of them is this week in New York, where the UN Commission on the Status of Women is being held March 10-21 with the theme "Accelerate Action." The event comes just after International Women’s Day, which was on Saturday, and during Women’s History Month.

Among the challenges today is that traditional funding sources for programs targeting girls’ health, education and advancement are under threat. It would be a terrible loss to girls themselves, their communities and all of us if we slow down or even reverse the progress so many girls have made—girls like an amazing group of inventors I met in Bolivia two years ago.

As part of its drive to promote STEM education for students over the past few years, Bolivia’s Agency for Electronic Information and Communication Technologies (AGETIC) has constructed 20 robotics and innovation laboratories in underprivileged areas across the country. UNICEF supported the work in a number of ways, including ensuring girls were equal participants.

At one of the centers in La Paz, I watched a group of girls who were part of a co-ed robotics team demonstrate various robots they had developed. Frankly, what they had created was well above my understanding. I was impressed, but didn’t realize how innovative they really were. Gratefully, the judges in Singapore at the First Global Challenge tournament knew how to spot innovation. They awarded the Bolivian team a top prize from among the 191 countries that participated. My goodness, I have a lot to learn about robotics.

While girls continue proving that they can do anything—including winning international robotics competitions—here is a sad statistic drawn from data from the World Economic Forum: At the current rate of progress for women and girls around the world, it will take 134 years—roughly five generations—to reach full gender parity, meaning girls have every opportunity boys have.

That would be the year 2158. Girls can’t wait that long.

We need to accelerate action. Here are a few efforts I am aware of that are doing just that:

• UNICEF’s Venture Fund has just launched a 5-year “FemTech” initiative—an effort to invest in women-led tech solutions to address healthcare, maternal care, gender-based violence and more for women and girls in emerging markets across Africa, Southeast Asia, South Asia and Latin America, with a special focus on the most vulnerable. Winners will receive funding of up to $100K, along with mentorship, technical assistance, research and a path to scale in collaboration with UNICEF’s 190-country network.
• UNICEF and Zonta International ’s partnership has just expanded to support Lahaa, a virtual safe space developed for women and girls to gain knowledge, create community and ask questions, including links to services, skill-building, and support. Laaha has been successfully piloted in Czechia, Ecuador, Iraq, Lebanon, Myanmar, Palestine, Poland, Slovakia, Türkiye, Ukraine and Venezuela since 2018.
• Sylvamo is partnering with UNICEF by investing $500,000 to support Skills4Girls, an initiative working in more than 20 countries to provide girls with marketable skills, including STEM, digital technology and social entrepreneurship. Supported by?private sector partners, including Clé de Peau Beauté and Chloé, Skills4Girls aims to reach over 10 million adolescent girls by the end of this year.
• Through the Game Changers Coalition, UNICEF is collaborating with the gaming and technology industries to equip girls with 21st-century skills such as coding, design, teamwork and storytelling through game development. As a part of the program, girls from around the world participate in gaming hackathons where they learn to work in groups and create actual video games.?In fact, tomorrow the Game Changers Coalition will host a panel discussion at SXSW in Austin, TX, to inspire conversation around harnessing the power of digital games to close the digital gender divide.

I’m excited for my granddaughter—only four years old but growing up fast—to live in a world where all girls have these kinds of opportunities and more. Every girl should because … they can do anything.