By Sheana Laughlin
26 September 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: As the United Nations and world leaders take this week to pause and look at the progress of the Millennium Development Goals, many policy makers are in agreement that gender equality must be addressed and improved.
Its long been said that the empowerment of women is necessary for the eradication of poverty, yet the girl child as a social group is considered the most invisible entity in society and is left out of human development, which raises the question as to how these same girls can be expected to grow up into empowered women if they are neglected and overlooked as children and adolescents. Girls in developing countries are known to face discriminatory cultural norms that make them vulnerable to HIV, sexual violence and forced marriages at a young age, notes a report by the Center for Global Development (CGD). The report also states that girls face systematic disadvantages over a wide range of welfare indicators, including health, education, nutrition, labor force participation, and the burden of household tasks.
Yet, the third Millennium Development Goal (MDG) calls for the empowerment of women and gender equality, and the current consensus advocates that MDG 3 is vital to the achievement of all the Millennium goals. “The empowerment of women and girls is inseparable. There will be no empowerment for women if girls are not empowered,” Anne-Marie Goetz, lead author of the United Nations Development Fund for Women’s (UNIFEM) Progress of the World’s Women 2008/2009 Report, told MediaGlobal.
Current research by the Nike Foundation indicates that the international community has failed to address the low status of the girl child by highlighting that 70 percent of the world’s 130 million out-of-school youth are girls and that 75 percent of HIV-infected youth in Africa are girls. The foundation also reports that pregnancy is the leading cause of death amongst girls between the ages of 15 to 19 worldwide, yet one-quarter to one-half of girls in poor countries become mothers before the age of 18.
The President of the Nike Foundation, Marie Eitel, noted that the first step to making the girl child more visible to global society is to count them. “We must count girls, we must invest in girls and we must advocate for girls,” she stressed today at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI). Obtaining the research and data on girls is “so important, it gives them value and the research needed to support investments,” she added.
Investing in girls can pay off for the entire community, Eitel noted as she pointed out the “Girl Effect”, a campaign founded by the Nike Foundation that highlights the economic and social benefits that can be gained through the education and empowerment of girls. “Investing in girls creates a ripple effect,” said Eitel, while noting that only a half cent of every dollar of aid currently goes to a girl, “Educated girls become educated women.”
The Girl Effect supports that adolescent girls in developing countries can bring unprecedented and economic change to their communities. The foundation cites research that has shown that girls and women will reinvest 90 percent of their income back into their families, as compared to 35-40 percent for males.
Educating girls is also said to slow down population growth. For example, when a girl in the developing world stays in school for seven or more years longer she is said to marry four years later and have 2.2 fewer children, reports the Nike Foundation.
Many now agree that investment is key, and at the Opening Plenary of the CGI Annual Meeting, Former President Bill Clinton announced the Adolescent Girl Initiative, a public-private partnership between the World Bank, the Nike Foundation and the country of Liberia, which aims to increase economic opportunities for adolescent girls as part of an effort to reconstruct Liberia after 14 years of war.
The initiative will identify employment needs in Liberia and then provide relevant skills-training to adolescent girls and young women. The training will not only focus on technical skills but also life-skills as a way to address the barriers to the development of adolescent girls’ economic independence. The partners plan to use Liberia as an example and use this project as a model that can be replicated in other developing countries.
“Much like microfinance practitioners did decades ago when providing the credit-worthiness of the poor, we intend to demonstrate an irrational gap in the market that severely undervalues adolescent girls’ economic potential. It will be girls who rebuild a nation,” said Eitel.
If successful, the initiative may be one of many needed to make girls more visible and esteemed in global society, and help progress towards gender equality, the achievement of MDG 3, and the success of all the Millennium Development Goals.