Empower Girl Child

Empowerment of girls and young women shouldn’t be an ‘option’ for a modern society, it should have already happened a long time ago.

Empowerment can be said to be the process of becoming stronger and more confident, especially in controlling one’s life and claiming one’s rights.

According to Amartya Sen, Nobel laureate and a founder of UNDP’s Human Development Index, Empowering the girl child with more choices and more freedoms is crucial to achieving a better future for all

Today’s girls are the women of tomorrow. To empower them, inequality and gender gaps must be reduced, which will conclude in strong women leaders. Empowering a girl child means empowerment in all aspects of their identity. It is about empowering girls to let them take their own decisions.

Nurturing the girl child is a way of insuring the future against absenteeism of women from different socio-political and economical spheres of the country.

The way in which economic progress is judged in the contemporary world … tends to give a much larger role to men’s needs and demands despite all the progress that has been achieved in enhancing the voices of women in the last half-century. There is the urgent need step-up efforts to make women’s lives “more free, more robust, and more empowered.”

Women agency and freedom are among the crucial means for enhancing development

It is a sad fact worldwide, that more than 60 million girls are out of school, with 20 million girls in Africa undergo female genital mutilation and 80 percent of girls in rural Africa don’t have access to education, we realize the problems of the current approach to development.

Society says girls are not inferior to boys, but what are they getting from the society? The undeniable truth though, is that a lot of girls never get what they truly deserve. Gender bias, culturally imbibed malpractices, human trafficking, child marriage, poor health and sanitation are some of the numerous problems that continue to cause troubles for girls.

The biggest of them all, is lack of education.

“High rates of maternal mortality and violence against women have made Nigeria one of the toughest places in the world to be born a girl as against Bangladesh, written off as a basket case” in recent memory, has achieved tremendous strides since the 1970s in reducing child mortality, increasing life expectancy, and reducing fertility from seven children per woman to 2.2 children per woman”.

Of all the children not in school, girls are in higher numbers than boys. This ultimately interprets to a higher number of women being illiterate, compared to men. Provision of basic education is a very key assurance of girls being given greater personal power and independence.

Women’s empowerment is catalytic and central” to achieving social and environmental goals, UNDP Associate Administrator Rebeca Grynspan said. “Women are central actors making the case for the sustainable development triple-win strategy”—meaning economic growth, social development, and environmental sustainability.

You educate a girl child, you educate a generation. Making better choices for themselves is made easy with no need to depend on those around them for the same. This ability is a necessity and shouldn’t be treated as a luxury.

To solve problems, we need to be able to identify them first. A lack of education prevents many girls from doing this. Without knowing their rights, they can never bridge the gap to their dreams.

Some girls still have their ambitions questioned. Thus a very few make it to the top. Illiteracy isn’t the only problem, flawed perceptions can be just as dangerous.

The United Nations, as well as a majority of nations and different organizations across the globe, have developed and organized programs which aim to ameliorate gender inequalities, various programs that are geared towards aiding young girls and women have a voice in the society and achieve their full potential have also been set up.

Today, let us give a face and a voice to that girl child who has long been ignored. Every girl has the right to be in charge of her future and her fate, and we have the collective obligation to protect her rights and promote her wellbeing.