Relearning the ABCs of girls education
[Music]
according to the unesco
women make up more than two-thirds of
the world’s 800
illiterate people and 130 million girls
worldwide
are out of school why are these shocking
numbers
still a reality in 2021 girls have the
drive to learn and there is overwhelming
evidence
that educating girls creates healthier
wealthier and more stable communities
so when girls education is so pivotal
why
isn’t every girl getting a quality
education
i am sheen originally from mauritius a
sunny island off the east coast of
madagascar
i am the first mauritian girl to have
attended both oxford and cambridge
universities
which meant that from a young age i have
been exposed to the inequality
that exists at every step of the
academic journey for girls
which is why i am now actively trying to
be an advocate for girls education
through several outreach programs in
place of the university
and the educational charity i founded
i’ve had the opportunity to work with
girls of different ages and from
different spheres of life
girls from african countries and refugee
camps with immigrant parents
girls attending state schools sadly they
have
all experienced some form of inequality
to access education
at some point in their life and these
barriers can take
very different forms and have different
extents of influence on each girl’s life
this made me realize that by blindly
bracketing all girls together
and generalizing the challenges they
face we’re not untangling the complex
network of intersecting causes
and therefore not truly solving the
problem
but before getting to the solution let
us try and gain clarity through the
stories of three girls i’ve met
let me start by introducing sarah an 18
year old syrian refugee
who has been in a refugee camp for over
two years
back in syria both my parents were
teachers
and i’ve always felt like education is
everything in life
she said she was happy to find out that
there were summer classes run by
charities in the camp and girls were
allowed to attend
however she was also sad to see her
friends drop out
for early marriage as it is considered a
quicker way to secure a stable future
outside of the camps
and to protect the girls from being
targets of sexual assault
limited access to schooling magnifies
the challenges of life in exile such as
finding work
staying healthy and holding on to
dignity and hope
it also limits the potential of refugee
girls and
women to rebuild their lives to protect
themselves
and to take a lead in shaping the lives
of their communities
now we meet taylor a 17 year old in a uk
state school
she said my teachers always said i was
hard working
no one ever used the word bright or
smart
there were so many clever boys and it
never felt like they had to do
any work to get the grades they did i
wanted to ask for help but i wasn’t
naturally good at sciences like them
so there wasn’t much point
this is heartbreaking to me learning
that young girls like taylor
can absorb and be influenced by gender
stereotypes
they pick up these gendered notions of
intelligence very early on
and this in turn affects what they
choose to pursue in terms of further
education
and career paths this is probably a
major reason why women make up less than
15 percent of all people working in stem
in the uk finally we meet aurelie
a 10 year old from a fishing village on
the east coast of africa
she said my sister and i had to drop out
of school
because my parents could no longer
afford to keep all six of us in
we had just started learning how to
manipulate numbers
and i think i was quite good at it but
now we help our parents by sorting the
octopus before selling them
education is free over there but there
are still
associated costs such as books uniforms
and transport therefore forcing parents
to still
choose which one of their children would
receive an education
since boys had a better chance of
getting a paid job of their graduation
daughters were rarely selected
evidently governmental bodies have the
funds and are actively trying to remedy
the situation
however they have neglected to consider
these associated costs
which are precisely the reasons keeping
the girls from school
the three stories i have just shared
with you have the same beginning
with a wish to learn and the same ending
with that wish
partially fulfilled at best but with
very different experiences of barriers
to education
looking back at our three stories the
barriers were firstly an
environment of unrest and emergency
secondly
school climate and the concept of social
belongingness assigned to genders
and finally the indirect cost of
education and
cultural norms these are but
a few from a range of complex
socio-economic factors responsible for
the inequality
in access to education
so how do we solve this problem this
brings me to a model i have developed
the abc model i believe that the
problems
can be solved by firstly a acknowledging
the differences in barriers to education
to different girls
it is clear now that different girls are
exposed to
different situations leading to
different barriers to access education
so let us dig deeper into what exactly
these barriers are for each girl
before we dive into creating a solution
b building the foundations to scaffold
each of them
providing solutions to specific problems
is something that we
as a global nation are generally good at
given that we have the means to identify
the right problem to solve
solutions can be tailored tested and
constantly monitored
and finally c creating opportunities to
empower girls
if we want to provide more opportunities
to girls
we should not only provide them with an
education
the perceptions of gender roles in the
workplace
need to change as well girl’s education
has to be combined with the creation of
opportunities for women
in both employment and entrepreneurship
now diving deeper into a the first step
to acknowledging the real problem
is extensive field research
a lot of aid and development work is
based on data collection
but the nature of this is problematic
let me tell you why
during interviews and surveys foreigners
with no previous experience of the local
language or culture
are usually sent over the people being
interviewed are made to feel inadequate
and are defined by terms that just bring
back
painful realizations for example
parents being asked if they feed their
children one two or three meals a day
or asking children to raise their hands
if they’re single or double orphans
meaning if they have lost one or both
parents
as a parent who cannot afford to send
their girls to school
being reminded of their inaptitude to
provide for their children
is an attack on their status which often
leads to defensive responses
making it harder to accurately
understand
their situation another dimension to
this problem
is also the biases associated with
vulnerable groups
that are intertwined within the system
people from those vulnerable groups are
usually perceived as poor decision
makers
and therefore their opinions are not
valued
even if data collection is done right
the reality is that they might make
decisions focused on coping with
present stressful situations such as
hunger often are the expenses of future
prosperity through education
an example highlighting the impact of
information gathering
is the case of a muslim village in ghana
where the attendance of girls older than
12 years old was very poor
it was assumed by international ngos and
that the problem
was the unwillingness of parents to
educate their daughters
and numerous awareness campaigns aimed
at addressing this proved to be
unsuccessful
however after proper information
gathering was carried out
alongside the local authorities it
became clear
that girls were not being sent to school
after puberty
because of the lack of gender
segregation which is deemed important
from their religious point of view
equipped with the right data the
authorities were in a better position
to acknowledge the real barrier to
education here
leading to the creation of the
appropriate solution
building a girls only school a follow-up
report a year later
found that the attendance of the girls
remained high showing that parents are
actually happy and willing to educate
their girls
once their concerns had been addressed
this easy step will now change the lives
of generations of girls in this village
in the uk i witnessed a similar case
where a lack of clarity
on the reasons for low interest from
teenage girls to pursue stem subjects
led to an ineffective outreach program
as part of the program girls are invited
to the university
to show them the fascinating and
cutting-edge work being done in various
fields from artificial intelligence and
medicine
to space technology in order to spike
interest
however most of the university
volunteers all the very well intentioned
and keen
are usually male this does
not break down the stereotypes and the
ideas of social belongingness
studies have shown that teenagers felt
they would fit in better in subjects
that had more of their own gender
showing them role models other girls and
women
whom they can relate to and speak to
about their similar experiences
makes a significant difference for these
girls
having been on a women in stem panel
myself i was very pleased to see the
level of interest and questions from the
girls
many of which are centered on how and
why we pick stem subjects
and what is it like being in a lab as a
girl
i was extremely happy to see one of the
attendees of the panel
in a first year natural sciences class i
was supervising the following year
even though we can all agree that this
might seem like common sense
and providing such a platform is a
relatively easy task
they are still absent in a lot of places
despite
being of utmost importance for these
girls
before the curved 19 crisis 130 million
girls were already
out of school and at the peak of the
pandemic
curb 19 interrupted the education of
over
1.5 billion learners as several
countries face
nationwide school closures
the disruption to education has placed
girls at higher risk of falling behind
in school
and permanently dropping out due to
exclusion from distance learning
opportunities
the pandemic has only exacerbated
existing inequalities
the unesco has estimated that globally
over 11 million girls may not return to
school
in 2021 due to the pandemic’s economic
impact alone
this will have devastating impact on
girls futures
serious and specific attention is needed
to ensure girls continuity of learning
and
return to school while protecting the
steady progress we have made in recent
years
as we start to plan a post covered world
our goal should not be a return to the
way things were
but instead a renewed commitment to the
way the world should be
a place where every girl can learn and
lead
to achieve this we must ensure our
governmental bodies societies and
education systems
work for girls and not against them
going back to our three stories we can
help each girl by following the three
steps in the abc model
a a thorough understanding of bias
and how it affects study results is
essential to provide
unprejudiced data collection
people with lived experiences have to be
involved to provide a realistic
understanding of the barriers the girls
in question
experience such as identifying the
associated cost of education
as the main barrier for oily
b brainstorming solutions based on
proper data collection
will ensure that the right support is
being given to the right audience at
the right time for example offering a
platform with female role models to
girls like taylor
will inspire the next generation of
women in stem
and finally see in the workplace
concepts a and b have to be reapplied to
address the under-representation of
women
in leadership roles despite the 50-50
gender split in the workforce in the uk
this will ensure that girls like sarah
can use education as a way to secure
stable future
outside of the refugee camps
we as a global nation have understood
that poverty and exclusion
affect girls both psychologically and
economically
and we know that if girls could be
educated and empowered to shape their
own destinies
they could change their communities and
nations forever
but before we get to that stage we must
be able to first recognize that each
girl’s problem
is uniquely distinct from that of
another’s
that’s my message to all of you today
you who will be the future decision
makers heads of companies educators and
key stakeholders in various spheres of
life
whenever you are faced with a challenge
make sure you dismantle the problem to
its specific
causes before diving into developing
solutions it is tempting to simplify
problems by bracketing them under an
umbrella term
for instance girls access to education
but these solutions
are too often limited and ineffective
change will not happen overnight but we
have the tools and knowledge to start
the systemic movement required
to bridge the gender gap in education
once and for all
join me to give the girls a chance and
trust me they’ll take
it from there