Empowering Girls in Education: Fixing the Girls or Fixing the Problem?

Off Our Backs, Nov/Dec 2003 by Kays, Lisa

"Clap for her, clap louder, louder," the MC bellowed into the microphone, occasionally stopping the ceremony to ensure that each participant was applauded loudly enough.

I witnessed this in 2000 in the West African country of Benin, where Peace Corps Volunteers and local organizers, three of which were men, organized a talent show to honor girls' education and abilities. The event featured every schoolgirl from two surrounding villages and was highlighted by the speeches of two girls who participated in a girls' empowerment program, Take Our Daughters to Work, sponsored by Peace Corps.

The emcee implored the crowd to clap louder in recognition of girls and their skits, speeches, and songs. A few times, he encouraged encores from the smallest girls and offered enthusiastic translations of their performances into local language.

A man showing such enthusiasm for girls' education was not often the norm in Benin, and I was somewhat shocked to be witnessing it.

It was shocking to me because I was on my third year of service in a country where, according to UNESCO's 2002 EFA Global Monitoring report, enrollment ratios for girls in school are two-thirds or less of those than boys. Further, I had spent two years teaching in classrooms where only about 6 of the 70 students per class were girls.

These statistics are fairly representative of the situation in the rest of Africa. UNESCO found that gender disparity was a general rule in sub-Saharan Africa as of 2002.

The reasons are often socioeconomic factors such as the need for girls to stay at home to watch younger siblings or maintain the household, assumptions that girls are not as intelligent or capable as boys or a family's assumption that an investment in a daughter's future is not wise since she will marry into another family.

I often asked my students why there were so few girls in my classes and was told (by the boys) that girls are lazy, don't like school and would rather stay home.

Interactions with my teaching colleagues, all of whom were male, were also enlightening. At a faculty meeting, a medical practitioner was brought in to discuss birth control methods. The faculty began debating which methods were best for the female students with whom they slept. After this, I often explained how I got through university without sleeping with a teacher (now it was their turn to be shocked), that I did not feel that girls were inherently stupid or lazy and that I did not support their using their female students as waitresses, cooks and "girlfriends."

Despite the difficulties African girls encounter to reach classrooms, there are signs of hope, due in part to international initiatives. In 1973, the Percy Amendment to the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act required that U.S. foreign aid take women into specific consideration. The Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 made strides to get women's concerns on the international agenda. Gender equality became one of eight United Nations Millenium Development Goals in 2000.

In Africa, the results of initiatives such as these are evident in decreasing disparities. Since the 1990s, gender disparity has lessened in at least 92 countries, among them the African nations of Benin, Chad, Guinea and Mali, said UNESCO in 2002. As an example of action leading to improvements, Benin eliminated girls' school fees in rural public schools and launched a parental awareness campaign about gender issues in education.

Two Different Worlds

The distinct differences between the opportunities afforded me as a young woman in the United States and those unavailable to so many of my female Beninese students and friends motivated me to become active in Peace Corps Benin's Women in Development committee.

According to Lyn Messner, Peace Corps' Women in Development/Gender and Development Coordinator, out of roughly 25 countries in Africa with Peace Corps programs, 19 have gender-based committees.

Like many of those countries' committees, Benin's has a nationwide girls' scholarship program for financially needy and academically promising girls.

Before its funding was cut this year, the committee also conducted a mentoring program called Take Our Daughters to Work, modeled after the Ms. Foundation's program. It consisted of introducing girls to successful professional women to inspire them to continue with school and seek careers. For many of these girls, their trip to the capital to meet their maman modele was the first time they saw a computer, telephone or toilet. The program also trained local women in the girls' villages to serve as role models. These mentors were given small funds to execute leadership activities for their community. Their girls' clubs, girls' soccer teams or micro-credit trainings built in HIV/AIDS education, reproductive health education, self-esteem building, study skills, and other activities.

Peace Corps is not unique in its work on gender issues in Africa. According to the Education for Democracy and Development Initiative's Web site, the U.S. government funds girls' scholarship programs in over 30 African countries, reaching over 16,000 girls.