• Girls education

Girls education

‘Because I am a Girl’ is the first of a series of annual reports by Plan focusing on girls and young women. The reports will be published every year from 2007 to 2015. This report outlines the major issues of concern for girls, and demonstrates what is being done at local, national and international levels. It argues that discrimination against girls and young women remains deeply entrenched and widely tolerated throughout the world. The struggle for women’s rights has made little impact on girls who continue to be undervalued in society and within their families. Society’s power structures allow this gender discrimination to continue.

While education is the main key to changing the situation for girls, the report identifies an eight-point action plan that would improve their lives.

• listen to girls and let them participate. Girls have the potential to articulate and secure their rights
• invest in girls and young women. Adequate resources must be made available at all levels in order for girls and young women to secure their rights. Their needs are often different from those of older women and from boys and men
• discriminatory laws should be reformed with a human rights perspective. Where laws to protect and support girls and young women already exist, they must be enforced
• attitudinal change is key, and this needs to be worked on in the family, in school and in society as a whole
• the poorest and most vulnerable girls and their families would benefit from comprehensive social support which could include regular and predictable grants, scholarships or stipends to encourage girls to go to school and supplementary nutrition
• get specific data on girls
• take a life cycle approach. This means addressing discrimination at every stage from birth until they are grown women
• systematic documentation and learning on girls’ rights and best practice is needed.
  

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