Equal Education Opportunities Are Vital For Our Future

My daughter was a teenager when I met two young women roughly her age in an area of rural Kenya home to families of the Maasai community.

At the time, my daughter was in high school in our town in Georgia, taking AP classes, struggling through Latin and beginning to think about college. Her mother, a teacher, had always made sure education was a priority as a doorway to opportunity.

The first young woman I met in the Maasai community was back home from boarding school talking about the classes she was taking, the people she had met and the careers she was beginning to think about. Her parents had made a tough choice in their context to invest in their daughter’s education to give her future options.?

The second young woman I met in the same community came from a family with more traditional priorities. She had been sent for marriage to a local elder as a third wife. When we met at her home—a traditional Maasai compound of small huts made from sticks and dung—she was holding a little baby, her first child. School had not been an option for her and options were not a part of her future.?

It struck me that in terms of their futures, the first young woman had more in common with my daughter than she did with her age mate from her own community. Why? Access to education.

I am thinking about all of this as Women’s History Month comes to a close. The theme of International Women’s Day this year was innovation and technology for gender equality. That’s a timely and important topic. But I can’t help but think this: if we can’t get basic girl’s education right across the globe, the hope for digital equality is a long way off.

I recognize that my daughter is in a privileged position. She grew up in a safe place where education was always available and valued for girls and women. When education is a privilege and a right that all girls and women have access to, communities become stronger.

Unfortunately, that is not yet the reality.?

I’m frustrated, frankly. Do we really need to make an argument today in favor of ensuring all girls have access to education? Isn’t it obvious by now?

We’re clear on the benefits. For instance, researchers estimate that more than 50 percent of the reduction in child deaths between 1970 and 2009 could be attributed to increased education for girls and women. And we know that women with more education marry at a later age and have fewer and healthier children.

We’re clear on the risks to girls who don’t receive an education. They have increased rates of child marriage, poverty, maternal mortality, and more.?

We know the old saying: “Educate a man and you get an educated man; educate a woman and you change a community.”

And we’ve read the book “Half the Sky” by Nick Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn . In it they make a case that women are the world’s greatest untapped resource if only we would address the risks they face from lack of education and economic opportunity along with maternal mortality and sexual violence.?

We know all of this and yet 130 million girls around the world are denied the human right to education, U.N. experts say . This includes hundreds of thousands of girls in Afghanistan where, earlier this month, girls were yet again banned from attending secondary school by de facto authorities. Girls have not been in school now for three years–first, due to COVID-19, and then because of the ban on attending secondary school. Girls’ absence from school will negatively impact their wellbeing and mental health, and is sure to have an adverse effect on Afghanistan’s economy and health system.?

What will it take to finally convince everyone everywhere that education not only benefits the girl, but also the family, the community, the nation and the world?

Maybe it will take more stories of people like Shahnaz , a 14-year old girl living in an impoverished community on the outskirts of Quetta in Pakistan. When UNICEF helped open a center for accelerated learning in her village, her father, Mira Khan, was hired as the only teacher. Only boys could enroll at the time, but with her father’s backing, she pretended to be a boy so she could attend. The center later opened a second class for girls and Shahnaz is now able to study freely.?

She has options. More girls should, too.