Women Education - Summary

While most of the Millennium Development Goals face a deadline of 2015, the gender parity target was set to be achieved a full ten years earlier - an acknowledgement that equal access to education is the foundation for all other development goals.[25] In countries where resources and school facilities are lacking, and total enrollments are low, a choice must often be made in families between sending a girl or a boy to school. Until equal numbers of girls and boys are in school, it will be impossible to build the knowledge necessary to eradicate poverty and hunger, combat disease and ensure environmental sustainability.[25] Millions of children and women will continue to die needlessly, placing the rest of the development agenda at risk. It is extremely important that girls have access to an education. For every additional year girls go to school, they receive 20 percent higher wages and suffer 10 percent fewer child deaths.[26] Women with some formal education are more likely to seek medical care, ensure their children are immunized, be better informed about their children’s nutritional requirements, and adopt improved sanitation practices. As a result, their infants and children have higher survival rates and tend to be healthier and better nourished. According to The International Center for Research on Women, the education that a girl receives is the strongest predictor of the age she will marry and is a critical factor in reducing the prevalence of child marriage.[27] The World Bank estimates that an additional year of schooling for 1,000 women helps prevent two maternal deaths.[28] Also, each additional year of formal education that a mother completes translates to her children staying in school an additional one-third to one-half of a year.[28]
Girls are not educated since she is considered a strain on the family's resources. Without an education, she cannot even voice her opinion, stand up for herself monetarily as well as emotionally, or battle the...