An inconvenient truth is hiding behind the current excitement about educating girls.

Kavita N. Ramdas:

Girls are hot. Reproductive rights are not. This is the strange and yet unspoken contradiction endemic in the current development discourse about gender equality. From the boardrooms of Exxon Mobil, to the World Bank, to the offices of the Nike Foundation and the overflowing halls at Davos and the Clinton Global Initiative, you can hear people talking about the importance of investing in girls. Women are often added as an afterthought--their inclusion is often phrased as "girls and women" rather than as "women and girls." Most often you hear that "educating girls" is the magic bullet of the 21st century.

The last time I heard something being prescribed as often as the solution to everything from low GDP rates and malnutrition in infants to endemic poverty, it was the early 1990s and the buzz was about something started by a Bangladeshi man named Muhammad Yunus. Girls' education is the new microfinance. Yet educating girls about their sexuality and providing funding for access to contraception, safe and legal abortion, and broad education about their reproductive health and rights--which was a significant emphasis of global philanthropy in the 1980s and 1990s--has now dwindled in popularity. Although a few dedicated foundations and the European bilateral aid donors continue their commitment to organizations such as the United Nations Population Fund, the new global actors are focused on girls' access to schools and learning.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at August 20, 2012 3:11 AM
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