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One step forward, two steps back toward gender equality?
The world and the context of development have changed quite drastically, but challenges, especially in education, gender-based violence and political participation persist, especially for the most marginalized.
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Two girls sit in a pushcart as they ask for alms from passersby along a street in Jakarta on Sept. 23, 2021. (AFP/Goh Chai Hin)
Today we will mark the 10th anniversary of the International Day of the Girl (IDG). This is the day when globally, we celebrate the power of girls, yet at the same time highlight the challenges they face.
A lot has happened in the course of 10 years, with the most notable being the pandemic COVID-19, the exponential growth of social media, the growth of start-ups and technology that change the future of work, the #Metoo movement and the Paris Climate Agreement.
That was not an exhaustive list. In short, the world has changed significantly. Some challenges remain and have become more severe, for some.
In 2012, Plan International published the sixth report of the State of the World’s Girls (SOTWG), Learning for Life, which takes a critical look at the state of girls’ education. The report argued that behind the success of global parity in primary education enrollment figures is a crisis in the quality of learning and that girls still lagged behind boys in getting opportunities for secondary, higher and vocational education. The report also highlighted the prevalence of abuse and sexual exploitation, as well as the high number of hours girls spend on household chores that negatively affected their ability to learn.
At the end of the report, Plan International called for any post-Millennium Development Goals to maintain a strong priority on education, including at least nine years of quality education and emphasis on gender equality, as well as expanding funding mechanisms to support quality education for girls. Protecting and promoting girls’ rights to education was seen as a way to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty.
Fast forward 10 years, education is still in crisis, perhaps even more than before. Currently, there are over 222 million children whose education is at risk. The pandemic alone has disrupted the education of more than 90 percent of the world’s children. Some more have experienced disruption in their education due to natural emergencies, wars and conflicts.
