The statistics are more than alarming. Recently, UNICEF indicated that as many as 132 million girls were out of school around the world, with 34.4 million girls excluded at the primary school age.
This situation exists despite the fact that getting an education as a young girl vastly improves quality of life for female students. UNICEF cites that national growth and individual economic growth increases for every educated female, while the child marriage rate, child and maternal mortality rate, and child underdevelopment rate drops significantly.
Even in countries that have been able to promote female education, their quality of schooling has not been demonstrated to be on par with the education that is received by their male peers.
In 2009, an organization known as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ran a study: the Program for International Student Assessment. It had a broad range of 65 countries and hundreds of thousands of students. Girls generally performed more poorly than boys, but in Latin America, this disparity was strikingly clear.
When the results were assessed and announced, one-third of the girls tested scored in the top one percent of the test-takers. Of these girls, 0.1% hailed from Latin America, despite the region comprising nearly a quarter of the girls taking the test. In fact, girls from other regions such as East Asia and the Pacific and Arab states, which sent less of a percentage of girls relative to Latin America, were at least five times more likely to end up in the top one percentile of test-takers compared to girls coming from Latin America.
Why?
Latin America seems to be a step forward on gender parity in education compared to other developing regions of the world. In 2007, over a quarter of the Latin American female population had either started or completed tertiary education. In only two countries — Guatemala and Bolivia — were boys staying in school longer than girls. However, gender roles still conduct a massive influence on what girls and boys choose to pursue in their education, with boys encouraged to choose fields of study rooted in math and science and girls told to pick roles in the public sphere or at home.
Figuring out a way to resolve this gender role stereotyping is extremely important towards achieving gender parity around the globe, and scholars are still developing research and new models as to how teachers, parents, and officials can break down the harm perpetuated by these stereotypes. Despite looking good on paper, Latin America is still behind on girls’ education; figuring out how to fix it is so important, which is why this topic is crucial towards the committee on the status of women. I hope you find this source helpful and look forward to hearing your debates!
Articles:
https://www.unicef.org/education/girls-education
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