Girl Education Essay

522 Words3 Pages
Girls’ education is emerging as one of the top priorities of the international development community. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said that “educating girls is not an option, it is a necessity,” and the 189 countries that signed up for the Education for All (EFA) initiative in 2000 showed their support by pledging to eliminate gender disparities in education by 2005. Much progress has been made in recent decades. The number of girls attending school, even in the poorest countries, has grown rapidly in the past 50 years. High-income countries have achieved full equality of access to education, and in the developing regions of Latin America, East Asia, and the Middle East, almost as many girls as boys now attend school. In some developing regions, however, millions of girls still receive little or no education. South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are far from meeting the EFA target, and progress in Central Asia has slowed in the last decade. Of the more than one hundred million children in the world without access to primary schooling, 60 percent are girls, and in countries like Afghanistan, Niger, Nepal, and Yemen, female literacy is less than half that of males. These disparities hurt not just girls themselves, but also their families and the societies in which they live. Girls suffer because they miss out on opportunities to socialize, acquire knowledge, and gain the skills and sense of autonomy needed to improve their personal well-being and their lot in life. Each additional year of schooling tends to increase an individual’s earnings by more than 15 percent, and education also improves women’s health and gives them a greater say in how their lives are conducted. Families suffer, too, if girls are not educated. Mothers with education use the knowledge they have acquired to improve the health of their children and other family members. In
Open Document