Girl power through a global lens

Experts and activists discuss whether girls really hold the power when it comes to education.

By Ashlei Williams

Khady Ndiaye, a Senegalese girl with cocoa skin and a broad smile, was 11 before she ever attended school. In 1998, Amy Maglio, Chicago resident and Peace Corps member, helped Ndiaye enroll in the first grade in her native country. Five years later, Maglio took that experience of fundraising for school fees and supplies and speaking with school administration started the Women’s Global Education Project. The organization promotes the global education of girls through programs focused on scholarships, mentoring and sustainability in developing countries.

Stories like Ndiaye’s seem farfetched to some in the U. S. as 37 percent of employed women 25 and older have at least a bachelor’s degree compared with 35 percent of employed men 25 and older who have at least a bachelor’s degree, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. While the United States is flooded with information about ladies succeeding in education, this trend is not reflected internationally.

“In 2009, nearly 68 million primary-age children around the world, primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, were out of school — 53 percent of which were girls.”

“In an information age, you need to take advantage of smart people you’ve got,” says Edward Fiske, editor of Fiske Guide to Colleges. “It doesn’t make any sense for countries to cut themselves off from the human resources of half the population.”
In 1948, the United Nations created the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which promises equal access to primary education for all genders. Yet, economic issues and social expectations remain barriers to academic systems.

“The opportunity costs of educating children are considerable for some families,” Fiske says. “They need the work on the farm and taking care of kids.”

Fiske says that in African and Asian areas, for example, often the eldest daughter takes on the responsibility to provide for the family by caring for siblings at home and working as a servant in other compounds. In some cases, this allows the other girl siblings to be educated at school. But in many situations this is done because there is a male sibling for which the family is more willing to send to school as an investment.

“You are expected to biologically reproduce at an age that might prevent you from returning to school,” says trained anthropologist Erin Moore says of the women she met in Kampala, Uganda.

Some girls do get into school, but they still face gender stereotyping, sexual harassment and unsafe environments in secondary education. The 2012 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s global atlas report revealed data about regions lacking in full and equal education opportunities for women and girls. The report showed that some incentive programs succeeded despite schooling obstacles. In the past two decades, the number of girls under 18 not enrolled in school decreased from 24 million to 10 million in school in South and West Asia.

“In Bangladesh, there’s a stipend for girls to continue studying in secondary education that’s kept a lot of girls in school,” says Albert Motivans, the head of Education Statistics at UNESCO. “In India, there are a number of flexible programs for young people, especially girls, to make up their education if they’ve missed school early.”

In Senegal, and recently in Kenya, Maglio established library and counseling programs to get community leaders, teachers and parents involved in her project.

“We’ve come in and we’ve been helping girls go to school. Other girls are now saying ‘Oh, I want to go to school just like my friend,’” Maglio says. “It’s coming from them.”

Education is only one crack of many to be made in the glass ceiling, according to Fiske and Motivans.

“Equality is really in terms of outcomes,” Motivans says. “In terms of what kinds of opportunities women have relative to men in the labor force to lead productive lives and to take part in society.”

With the help of the Women’s Global Education Project, Ndiaye completed primary and middle school before starting vocational training. She has completed two years of classes to become a nursing assistant. With the barrier of education behind her, Ndiaye hopes to pass her practicum this year.