A few years ago, I visited a family in Colombia who had been forcibly displaced by the decades-old conflict ravaging the country. While we talked in their one-room, thatched-roof shack, a girl, 8 to 10 years old, came home from school, greeted us and then without saying a word disappeared behind a curtain. We soon heard the clanging of pots and plates. The smell of frying garlic filled the entire house, followed by more aromas. I then saw her go outside to fetch water, which she carried back inside. After more than an hour, the girl came to say she had finished cooking and asked permission to go out and play with her friends.
At that time, I thought how hard the life of this girl must be. Fetching water and preparing a meal for the family were obviously part of her daily chores. Displaced from their home and living in poverty, her parents would often be out finding a way to earn some income, leaving her alone after school.
130 million girls worldwide still do not have the chance to get an education.
And yet, when I met other girls living in poverty, I found myself thinking she was one of the lucky ones. At least she was going to school. For many other children all over the world, particularly girls, this is not the case.
Despite significant improvements in girls’ education in the last decade, especially at the primary level, 130 million girls worldwide still do not have the chance to get an education. Among the poor, the gap between boys and girls is particularly high at the secondary level; girls either do not go to school at all or are more likely to drop out than boys. The proportion of girls at the university level is even smaller.
Poverty and gender bias are the greatest barriers to education for girls. If a family has limited resources, they prefer to send the boys to school. Girls are needed for household chores. A Jesuit in South Sudan recently told me that some girls in the boarding school he helps to run do not want to go back to their villages during holidays because they might be forced into early marriage and not be able to return. In some schools, girls who become pregnant are expelled, condemning them to a life of poverty.
Lack of education affects more than just the individual girls. It is linked to decreased family income, lower nutrition levels and rates of child vaccination, leading to poorer health for communities. It affects society as a whole. It leads to greater poverty and limits the economic growth of entire countries.
Poverty and gender bias are the greatest barriers to education for girls.
Beyond its socioeconomic impact, the denial of education to girls is a violation of a basic human right and of their dignity as human beings made in the image of God.
The Jesuits have identified four apostolic preferences to serve as a guide for their work over the next 10 years. One of the preferences speaks of “walking with the excluded: the poor, the outcasts of the world, those whose dignity has been violated, in a mission of reconciliation and justice.” Among those who are excluded are girls denied access to quality education.
Walking with them requires a gender and age-sensitive approach: from needs assessment to the implementation and the evaluation of any initiative we take. Jesuit organizations like the Jesuit Refugee Service and Fe y Alegría have made girls’ education a priority. Organizations like Lok Manch in India have developed policies that allow them to promote access to education and other human rights from a perspective of gender.
Girls are determined to learn. I have met girls who walk up to five hours a day to get to school, who will gather around one lightbulb to do their homework and who will take exams on the ground under a tree. They do it for themselves, for their future and for the good of the community. All they need is an opportunity.
