Sustaining girl-child development

Thirteen years ago today, the United Nations General Assembly declared October 11 as the International Day of the Girl Child.

This was to focus attention on the need to address the challenges girls face, by promoting and empowering them in fulfilment of their human rights.

A decade and three years down the line, steady progress has been made in their access to education, health, human rights, among others.

But as the United Nations concedes, “today’s generation of girls are disproportionately affected by global crises of climate change, conflict, poverty and pushback on hard-won gains for human rights and gender equality.

Too many girls are still denied their rights, restricting their choices and limiting their futures”. 

The United Nations provides some revealing statistics. Nearly one in five girls is still not completing lower secondary, while nearly four in 10 girls are not completing upper secondary school today.

Around 90 per cent of adolescent girls and young women do not use the Internet in low-income countries but their male peers are twice as likely to be online.

Globally, girls aged five to 14 spend 160 million more hours every day on unpaid care and domestic work than boys of the same age.

Girls continue to account for three in four new HIV infections among adolescents.

Nearly one in four married or partnered adolescent girls aged 15-19 have experienced physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner at least once in their lifetime.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, 100 million girls were at risk of child marriage in the next decade. And now over the next 10 years, up to 10 million more girls worldwide will be at risk of marrying as children because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nonetheless, this year’s theme of “Girls’ vision for the future” expresses the need for urgent action and persistent hope, driven by the power of girls’ voices and vision for the future.

Education is one of the most important tools for the empowerment of girls to make them thrive and improve health outcomes.

Girls have a right to education. Experts say when girls are educated, their lives, their children’s lives, families, communities and countries improve.

In Ghana, there have been many initiatives to improve girls’ access, retention and quality outcome of education. For instance, the Girls’ Education Unit  was established by the Ministry of Education to ensure the participation of girls, who had lagged behind boys in all indicators, while the Girls Education Initiative of Ghana provides academic and financial support for girls.

Similarly, CAMFED Ghana works to support marginalised girls to finish secondary school, and through its transition programmes, help them to the stage of post-school employment or further education and training, while the Strategic Approaches to Girls’ Education project lowered the barriers girls face at obtaining education by providing formal and non-formal education tracks.

Although these initiatives and others have succeeded in improving girls’ access to education, UNESCO’s 2020 Gender Report suggests that although girls’ enrolment in school has increased steadily over time, there is still great gender disparity at higher levels of education, for example, in subjects related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

There is no doubt that in recent years, there have been measures to boost girls’ participation in STEM in Ghana, especially with the operationalisation of seven STEM schools and their inclusion in the Computerised Schools Selection and Placement system.

However, the Daily Graphic believes that there is the need to do more by investing in girls’ STEM education to increase their interest in the sciences by integrating STEM into primary education and providing hands-on experience and activities.

Additionally, the paper believes that it is important to introduce and highlight female STEM role models and their achievements, organise more STEM clinics and mentorship programmes for girls to be paired with female STEM mentors, and create opportunities for girls to meet and interact with women in STEM.

The teaching and learning models for STEM subjects also need to be looked at to ensure that they use relatable, real-world examples, female-friendly, fun and engaging activities as possible to attract many young girls to take up STEM-related courses.

Furthermore, offering scholarships and financial aid to girls interested in STEM could motivate more girls to opt for STEM-related courses.

The Daily Graphic calls for collective efforts which advocate the need to invest in quality health care, as well as information on reproductive health. This would help end child marriage and period poverty, give girls equal opportunities to unlock their potential, protect their rights and provide them with a safe environment to make them thrive.

As the UN states: “With the right support, resources and opportunities, the potential of the world’s more than 1.1 billion girls is limitless. And when girls lead, the impact is immediate and wide-reaching: families, communities and economies are all stronger, our future brighter”.