The Girl Effect is Powerful

The Girl Effect is defined as “the powerful social and economic change brought about when girls have the opportunity to participate in their society.” The Girl Effect website has a lot of facts about how the world improves when girls have more education, support and power. Here is some data, passed on in a post by Nancy White.

• When a girl in the developing world receives seven or more years of education, she marries four years later and has 2.2 fewer children. (United Nations Population Fund, State of World Population 1990.)
• An extra year of primary school boosts girls’ eventual wages by 10 to 20 percent. An extra year of secondary school: 15 to 25 percent. (George Psacharopoulos and Harry Anthony Patrinos, “Returns to Investment in Education: A Further Update,” Policy Research Working Paper 2881[Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2002].)
• Research in developing countries has shown a consistent relationship between better infant and child health and higher levels of schooling among mothers. (George T. Bicego and J. Ties Boerma, “Maternal Education and Child Survival: A Comparative Study of Survey Data from 17 Countries,” Social Science
  and Medicine 36 (9) [May 1993]: 1207–27.)
• When women and girls earn income, they reinvest 90 percent of it into their families, as compared to only 30 to 40 percent for a man. (Phil Borges, with foreword by Madeleine Albright, Women Empowered: Inspiring Change in the Emerging World [New York: Rizzoli, 2007], 13.)

Nancy’s discussion of the issues around The Girl Effect and the video in her post are compelling. As a proud father of an accomplished daughter and delighted grandpa to an extremely inquisitive grandaughter, this cause has my support. (GW)

The Girl Effect – Catalyzing Postive Change | Full Circle Blog | Nancy White | 24 November 2008

Tagged as: Gender, Poverty