FILM REVIEW Educating a Girl can save the world
By Dinesh Sharma
While women's schooling has been demonstrably related to child survival and other childhood outcomes beneficial to children in the developing world, the "cultural pathways" that underline these statistical connections have not been fully explored. Now, there is a very touching yet powerful documentary film, Girl Rising, which raises our awareness of this universal truth - by educating a girl, you can actually change the world.
Literacy and mothering
In a book I reviewed last year for a scientific journal, I examined the issue of girl's education. In Literacy and Mothering: How Women's Schooling Changes the Lives of the World's Children, the authors Robert LeVine, professor at Harvard University in anthropology, education and human development, and Sarah LeVine, a research associate in education and Sanskrit and
Indian studies, show for the first time how early communication plays a key role in child survival.
The authors report that "Girl's acquire academic literacy skills, even in low-quality schools, which enable them, as mothers, to understand public health messages in the mass media and to navigate bureaucratic health services effectively, reducing risks to their children's health."
Academic literacy drives health literacy, media literacy, and the health navigation skills. This reduces risks to childhood mortality, altering interactions between mother and child. Assessments of these maternal skills around the globe - South Asia, South and Latin America and Africa - support this model.
The authors have almost a century of cultural experience on child development, stretching back to the pioneering work of the "culture and personality" studies begun by Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict and John Whiting's "Six Cultures" research program. Apparently, Charles Darwin and Larry Summers both agree on this point - girls' schooling is an economic issue with the potential to transform societies.
With the onset of globalization, this traditional knowledge perfected over many years - like old wine - has to be preserved in newer bottles. The film, Girl Rising, manages to do this with many powerful narrative voices and great storytelling.
Girl Rising
This is a compelling film that is bringing a global movement to educate girls and change the world home to movie theaters. At a screening at the Asia Society in New York, the society's executive vice president Tom Nagorski said when introducing the film that he was completely moved by the stories. If you have a daughter, a grand-daughter, and sisters, cousins and nieces, you will be moved by it too, even though the stories are likely to be of worlds far more impoverished than our own.
Nine highly impressionable girls, "born into unforgiving circumstances", are the main protagonists of the film. The film captures their dreams, their voices and their remarkable journey.
Directed by Academy Award-nominee Richard E Robbins and narrated by Cate Blanchett, Priyanka Chopra, Selena Gomez, Anne Hathaway, Salma Hayek, Alicia Keys, Chloe Moretz, Liam Neeson, Freida Pinto, Meryl Streep, and Kerry Washington, this feature film is at the center of 10x10 - a global campaign to educate and empower girls.
"If to see it is to know it, this film delivers hope; reasonable, measurable, tangible hope that the world can be healed and helped to a better future", said Meryl Streep, one of the film's narrators.
Holly Gordon, executive director of 10x10, said: "Girl Rising is about the world-changing power of educating girls.'' Alicia Keys, who also narrates the film, commented: It's a powerful film that has potential to inspire change in the world. If you're not moved, you're not breathing."
Richard Robbins, the director of the film, said: ''When girls go to school and get an education, they stay healthy. They save money. They speak up. They build businesses. Then they pass it all on ... and poverty declines. Challenges become opportunities; progress happens."
Girls face higher barriers to education, much more than boys. Yet, by educating a girl it is possible to break cycle of poverty. It is possible to stop downward drift in just one generation. The statistics compiled here offer insights on the current status of girls' education. They illustrate the lasting impact education has on girls, families, communities, and nations around the world.
Sixteen facts about girl's education are eye-opening:
1. Globally, 66 million girls are currently not enrolled in either primary or secondary education (UNESCO, 2012).
2. 80% of all human trafficking victims are girls (UNFPA, 2005).
3. There are 33 million fewer girls than boys in primary school (Global Education First, 2012).
4. 75% of AIDS cases in sub-Saharan Africa - the region hardest hit by the disease - are women and girls (UNAIDS, 2010).
5. In a single year, an estimated 150 million girls are victims of sexual violence (UNIFEM).
6. 50% of all the sexual assaults in the world are on girls under 15 (UNFPA, 2005).
7. 14 million girls under 18 will be married this year; 38,000 today; that is 13 girls in the last 30 seconds (UNFPA, 2012).
8. The number one cause of death for girls ages 15 - 19 is childbirth (World Health Organization).
9. Girls with eight years of education are four times less likely to be married as children (Mensch, Singh, and Casterline, 2005).
10. A child born to a literate mother is 50% more likely to survive past the age of five (UNESCO, 2011).
11. Educated mothers are more than twice as likely to send their children to school (UNICEF).
12. School is not free in over 50 countries (UNESCO, 2011).
13. A girl has a one in four chance of being born into poverty (The World Bank, 2008).
14. A girl with an extra year of education can earn 20% more as an adult (The World Bank, 2011).
15. If India enrolled 1% more girls in secondary school, its GDP would rise by US$5.5 billion (Global Campaign for Education and RESULTS Education Fund).
16. There are 600 million girls in the developing world (The World Bank, 2011).
Displaying the interplay of these complex drivers of global change, the film describes the lives of Sokha (Cambodia), Ruksana (India), Suma (Nepal), Yasmin (Egypt), Senna (Peru), Azmera (Ethiopia), Amina (Afghanistan), Wadley (Haiti), and Mariama (Sierra Leone). By learning about their lives, we learn how to increase the share of democracy by enhancing educational development. Regal Cinemas will be featuring Girl Rising in theaters around the United States for one week, beginning April 19.
Democracy and development
One of the debates raging at the center of globalization studies is how to increase the share of voice for women. If democracy and development is to succeed in the developing world it must give greater power to the other half of the population. How can a nation claim to be democratic while half of its citizens fear for their security and well-being? This is the question many have been asking in the wake of the rape crisis in India?
I heard many African women ask similar questions at a panel on "women activists and leaders" during a conference focused on Global Africa. How can African women, and African Muslim women in particular, draw upon their local traditions to transform their societies from within?
Many of the traditional societies embracing development programs tend to have powerful women at the center of the domestic sphere. By transforming their lives, it is possible to transform the lives of the next generation of young girls. Early education - primary and secondary schooling - offers one of the "cultural pathways" through which to navigate some of the complex challenges of development, while drawing upon local role models for women's lives without disrupting the social and moral order.
Thus, it is not a coincidence that many of the early post-colonial reformers, such as Mahatma Gandhi, made the campaign for the improvement of women part and parcel of the national development.
Dinesh Sharma is the author of Barack Obama in Hawaii and Indonesia: The Making of a Global President, which was rated as a Top 10 Black history book for 2012. His next book The Global Obama: Crossroads of Leadership in the 21st Century is due to be published with Routledge Press.
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