The Girls Right To Education Movement
The right to education on the basis of non-discrimination and gender equality is a recognised right under human rights laws. The history of equal rights in women's education started in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and India but gained traction in the 18th century, when it developed alongside the broader context of women's rights and other actions being taken for gender equality. The movement aims to open opportunities for girls to learn and grow to their full potential. Important figures such as Malala Yousafzai push for policies that will fortify girls' paths towards foundational and higher education through global and national advocacy. Other large figures in the movement are: Julia Guillard and Emma Watson, both of whom have significantly impacted girls' right to education and feminism as a whole. The movement uses economic empowerment, breaking down teachers' biases and challenging negative gender perceptions to achieve its goals. Along with building safe environments connecting girls with mentors and trusted adults in their communities and finally a coordinated effort between governments, communities, charities and even corporations to bring about positive changes in the world.
This movement aims to improve and globalise women and young girls education and therefore is a reformative movement due to its scale and goals. Reformative movements seek to change one specific aspect of a society rather than the whole. It seeks to change a social or political system to something more ideal to the whole community. They observe the whole of society but only target one specific type of oppression or injustice which majorly affects a category of people. Though women's education does affect the whole world—educated women changing the world in their own ways—this movement does not aim to revolutionalise education as a whole. Instead it seeks to remove barriers to girls achieving the same amount and quality of education as boys therefore having a positive affect on all education in the future. The more educated people there are, the better all future educations will be. According to the Malala Fund website:
"Educated women provide vital skills and knowledge to the workforce, driving economic growth and innovation. Women with secondary education earn almost twice as much as women with no education. When women earn more, they uplift their families and contribute to national economies."
Depending on the country you are looking at the women's right to education movement is in wildly different stages. In Australia we are the decline stage, due to success. There is not much fighting for specifically girls’ rights to education as girls have close to equal amounts of education to boys in Australian schools. Instead there is a larger fight for education of lower income families or people struggling with mental health. There is still gender inequality in STEM subjects and with girls of Aboriginal or torres Strait Islander decent. However if you look at other countries such as Afghanistan, where only 26% of girls are in school and secondary education is banned for women it is nowhere near es equal or as close to change. To address this, many activists are working to liberate these girls, especially those in the Malala Fund. Malala Habibi, Sahar Halaimzai, Cassandra Joseph and Gaisu Yari are actively working towards a brighter future for young women and girls in Afghanistan. The west is growing closer to educational equality, some places even having higher rates of girls in school than boys (which is to be expected, women make up more of the population in some countries) but that has encouraged some of the momentum in the movement to drop off due to success in those places. Activists there, thinking their work is done, have turned to other issues. Despite all of the progress the movement has made and its massive impact on everyone alive today, the fight is not over, those girls still need help to reach equality.
The movement had significantly impacted many girls and women's lives, providing rights to education, resources and support where they may not have any. Examples of significant laws that have been passed which impact women's educational rights are: Title IX, a federal civil rights law which prohibits sex based discrimination in schools in America and the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women in Australia, which is self explanatory,. The movement has positively impacted the economy, the political state of the world and each country individually, as well as the lives and childhoods of most women alive today. But the fight is not over, each country is in a different stage and just because some countries are getting closer to equal rights does not mean the movement is over, or activists should stop fighting. The more activists who speak up, the better all girls’ lives will become. The movement has support from many social figures, corporations and educated persons. Emma Watson, famous actress and Goodwill Ambassador to UN Women, frequently fights for girl’ rights to education and has been for years. In her speech in New York, 2014, she spoke up about how gender equality and girls’ rights to education is not only made by the laws being passed or grand gestures of financial subsidy, but also in the small acts of support within a community:
"No country in the world can yet say they have achieved gender equality.
These rights I consider to be human rights but I am one of the lucky ones. My life is a sheer privilege because my parents didn’t love me less because I was born a daughter. My school did not limit me because I was a girl. My mentors didn't assume I would go less far because I might give birth to a child one day. These influencers were the gender equality ambassadors that made me who I am today. They may not know it, but they are the inadvertent feminists who are changing the world today. And we need more of those." (Watson, 2014)
Aside from the social support the movement has raised there are also significant changes in other areas; statistically higher enrolment rates, girls staying longer in schools being the more obvious ones but also declines in child marriage, child mortality, maternal mortality and child stunting. More educated women have been able to fight for their rights more effectively and also provide to the community around them, providing doctors, lawyers, politicians and teachers who will contribute to society far more effectively with a higher level of education, thanks to the Girls’ Right To Education movement.
Malala Yousafzai is one of the largest figures in the fight for equality in girls’ education today. She is currently 28 years old and her story is being taught in schools all over the world. She is from Pakistan and received Pakistan's first National Youth Peace Prize at 14 and a Nobel Prize at age 17. At first she wrote political and autobiographical articles concerning the Taliban's occupation of Swat but after a few years of activism, she was shot in the head by a Taliban assassin while on a bus coming back from an exam. She was hospitalised and recovered but has since been and icon of activism, fighting for women's rights and the right to education. She also has a presence online, urging students not to skip school and to value their education. Students online keep photos of Malala on their walls above their desks and next to their homework to encourage them to keep working. Malala is an icon of this movement and young people protesting as a whole.
Bibliography
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Malala Fund. (2013). Malala Fund | Working for a world where all girls can learn and lead. Malala.org. https://malala.org/
UNESCO. (2022). Gender equality and education. Www.unesco.org. https://www.unesco.org/en/gender-equality/education
Wikipedia Contributors. (2019, October 5). Timeline of women’s education. Wikipedia; Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Women%27s_education
GPE Secretariat. (2015). 15 women leading the way for girls’ education. Globalpartnership.org. https://www.globalpartnership.org/blog/15-women-leading-way-girls-education
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Wikipedia Contributors. (2019, April 27). Title IX. Wikipedia; Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_IX
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Emma Watson appointed as UN Women Goodwill Ambassador | UN News. (2014, July 8). News.un.org. https://news.un.org/en/story/2014/07/472632
UNICEF. (2023). Girls’ education. UNICEF. https://www.unicef.org/education/girls-education
Emma Watson: Gender equality is your issue too. (2014, September 20). UN Women. https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2014/9/emma-watson-gender-equality-is-your-issue-too
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