Gender equality through education
How to Promote and Sustain Gender Equality
Girls’ education is a right and a critical lever to reaching other development objectives. Providing girls with an education helps break the cycle of poverty: educated women are less likely to marry early and against their will; less likely to die in childbirth; more likely to have healthy babies; and are more likely to send their children to school. This creates a ripple effect of improving gender relations all starting with an education.Unfortunately men are more likely to respect a woman if she has an education but also having girls in their classrooms from an early age will teach boys to see women as their equals. To sustain the increases in gender equality schools can empower girls by supporting life skills-based education, showing female role models in education and providing a gender-sensitive environment that is conducive to learning at all levels.
Facts on women in education
-An estimated 31 million girls of primary school age and 32 million girls of lower secondary school age were out of school in 2013.
-Africa has the lowest gender parity
-Evidence shows that the return to a year of secondary education for girls correlates to a 25 per cent increase in wages later in life
- If all girls had secondary education in sub-Saharan Africa and South and West Asia, child marriage would fall by 64 per cent, from almost 2.9 million to just over 1 million.