Girls and Women Change our World: The girl child

Series introduction

I previously spoke of when I travelled to India with Girl Guides. The reason for this was to attend a conference on children's rights advocacy. One issue which we kept returning too was the fact that whatever the issue was, it was generally worse for girls. Girls have less education, poorer health and are more likely to be in situations where they are unable to help themselves.

Educational disadvantages
- Approximately one-quarter of girls in developing countries are not in school. (Cynthia B. Lloyd, ed., Growing Up Global: The Changing Transitions to Adulthood in Developing
Countries [Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2005].)
- Out of the world’s 130 million out-of-school youth, 70 percent are girls. (Human Rights Watch, “Promises Broken: An Assessment of Children’s Rights on the 10th Anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child,” www.hrw.org/campaigns/crp/promises/education.html [December 1999].)


Child marriage issues
- One girl in seven in developing countries marries before age 15, and 38% marry before 18. (Population Council, “Transitions to Adulthood: Child Marriage/Married Adolescents,”  www.popcouncil.org/ta/mar.html [updated May 13, 2008] and Cynthia B. Lloyd, ed., Growing Up Global: The Changing Transitions to Adulthood in Developing Countries [Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2005].)
- Girls who have not been to school are far more likely to be married as a child than those girls who have gone to school. (International Center for Research on Women, Too Young to Wed: Education & Action Toward Ending Child Marriage, www.icrw.org/docs/2006_cmtoolkit/cm_all.pdf [2007].)
- A survey in India found that girls who married before age 18 were twice as likely to report being beaten, slapped, or threatened by their husbands as were girls who married later. (International Center for Research on Women, Development Initiative on Supporting Healthy Adolescents [2005], analysis of quantitative baseline survey data collected in select sites in the states of Bihar and Jharkhand, India [survey conducted in 2004].)

Girls are uniquely positioned to have a positive effect on our world.

For more information head over to The Girl Effect.



Part 1: What are the issues?
Part 3: What about the men?