There’s reason to celebrate progress on women’s rights
By Medicine Hat News Opinon on December 31, 2018.
It’s easy to feel hopeless when, year after year, progress on women’s rights and equality is seemingly measured in inches, not miles. Yes, only 11 out of 192 heads of government are women. Yes, the faces of heads of industry are overwhelmingly male. And, yes, there’s even some evidence that the number of women who make it to the top rung is actually decreasing. But in 2018 there was reason to celebrate, if one looked at more basic measures of equality than who makes it into a political or corporate corner office (though that’s important, too). Indeed, there has been steady, if not massive, progress on rights affecting millions of girls and women around the world on important fronts such as access to education and clean water, elimination of the practice of female genital mutilation, and the banning of child marriages. The reason? An increasing number of countries are focusing more of their aid on projects targeted at helping girls and women. On that front, Canada is sensibly leading the way. In 2017, the Trudeau government launched its “Feminist International Assistance Policy,” which promotes sustainable development through a “gender-equality lens.” This is not just political hokum. It works to improve the world, not just for girls and women, but for boys and men, too. Indeed, almost two decades ago, the World Bank found that simply educating girls was the No. 1 way to improve family health, increase economic output, and reduce government corruption. Since then, studies from world organizations have only backed up the importance of bettering girls’ lives to improve the lot of the world. A 2018 report from the World Bank, for example, found that limiting girls’ education cost countries between $15 trillion and $30 trillion in lost lifetime productivity and earnings. Another suggested that promoting girls’ education can even help fight climate change. Happily, then, UNESCO reports that the gap between girls’ and boys’ access to education is steadily closing. Still, there’s a long way to go. The UN agency estimates 130 million girls between the 6 and 17 are out of school and 15 million girls of primary-school age — half of them in sub-Saharan Africa — will never enter a classroom. Why would that be? Sometimes it’s something as commonplace as a lack of access to clean water. Instead of going to school, girls must work as community water carriers, sometimes making multiple trips to ponds many hours away. As well, a lack of sanitation facilities at schools can inhibit girls from going to classes when they are menstruating. That’s where aid programs, such as Global Affairs Canada’s $4.4 million over four years to help get clean water and sanitation to Tanzanian mothers and children, come in. Another barrier to girls attending school is the practice of marrying them off as children. That also poses a threat to maternal and infant survival rates because of the increased risk of complications in pregnancy and childbirth among young mothers. Progress is being made on that issue, too. According to the UN, 25 million child marriages were prevented in the last decade. In 2000 one in three women between 20 and 24 reported they had been married as children, if not sold off as brides (sometimes on Facebook) for the dowries they bring to their families. By 2018 that number was down to around one in five. Perhaps one of the biggest successes in the fight for girls’ and women’s rights is the downturn in the practice of female genital mutilation. The procedure — which the World Health Organization describes as the “partial or total removal of external female genitalia” — can lead to painful sex, problems with urination and menstruation, difficulties in childbirth, chronic kidney infections and even death. The bad news is it has been inflicted upon at least 200 million women and girls. The good news is that more countries are banning the practice, leading to dramatic declines in some parts of the world where it once was commonplace. In fact, in 2018, BMJ Global Health reported the rate of FGM among girls aged 14 and under in east Africa had dropped from 71.4 per cent in 1995 to just 8 per cent in 2016. In other words, when countries focus their aid programs on a problem, it can be solved. And those numbers could drop much further as more and more girls become educated and have a say in banning a practice that most don’t support. As heartening as that is, the UN Population Fund warns that the number of women predicted to be mutilated each year could rise to 4.6 million by 2030, despite the bans, because of population growth in communities that practice it. That’s one of the many reasons why countries can’t afford to turn away from aid projects that promote the rights of girls and women. They should do so not only on these issues, but on efforts to stem sexual assaults, domestic violence, spousal rape and closing the world-wide gender pay gap. As study after study shows, promoting girls’ rights is a sure path to a healthier and more prosperous world for all. That is a cause worthy, then, for all governments’ support. Canada is showing the way. — Toronto Star 29-28
