Taking birth as a girl is a God’s gift. Many accept it and others treat it as a curse. A girl’s life is for creating a new generation from which a new world starts. And this is well nourished in the teenage of a girl. The teenage years are a time of exploration, learning and increasing autonomy of the girls. But for many others, it has become a time of increasing vulnerability and exclusion from rights and opportunities, or just plain discrimination from all sectors.
There are more than 1.5 billion young people in the world today, making up the largest youth generation in history. Half of them are girls and young women, with approximately 600 million adolescent girls living in developing countries. The choices and opportunities made available to adolescent girls in the coming years will shape their lives and those around them. Yet, most of them live in dire circumstances. Out of the world’s 130 million out-of-school youth, 70 per cent are girls.82 million girls in developing countries who are now between the ages of 10 and 17 will be married before their 18th birthday. One-quarter to one-half of girls in developing countries become mothers before 18, and girls below 15 are five times more likely to die during childbirth than women in their 20s.
Today, 1.2 billion adolescents stand at the crossroads between childhood and the adult world. As they stand at these crossroads, so do societies at large - the crossroads between losing out on the potential of a generation or nurturing them to transform society. As adolescents flourish, so do their communities, and all of us have a collective responsibility in ensuring that adolescence does in fact become an age of opportunity.
Investing in the world’s 1.2 billion adolescents aged 10-19 now can break deep-rooted cycles of poverty and inequity, said UNICEF in its 2011 State of the World’s Children report entitled ‘Adolescence: An Age of Opportunity’. India is home to more than 243 million adolescents, who account for a quarter of the country’s population. Over the past two decades, rapid economic growth has lifted millions out of poverty. In 2009, there were an estimated 1.2 billion adolescents in the world, forming around 18 per cent of the global population. The vast majority of the world’s adolescents 88 per cent live in developing countries. The least developed countries are home to roughly 16 per cent of all adolescents.
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report said that 77 per cent of girls aged 15 to 19 years in India have at least once experienced forced sexual intercourse or any other forced sexual acts by their current husband or partner. It also added that in India 34 per cent of ever-married girls aged 15 to 19 years have experienced some form of physical, sexual or emotional violence committed by their husbands or partners. And the girls who had not been married were most likely to report physical violence at the hands of family members, friends, acquaintances and teachers.
Girls need to be empowered because young women in the developing world are generally less educated, less healthy, and less free than their male peers. In many places, girls and young women do not enjoy the basic rights and protections of citizenship, including the right to own and inherit land when they reach majority age, attend school, access healthcare services and information, hold certain jobs, stop unwanted sexual advances, and obtain justice for sexual assault and abuse. Because of their lack of economic opportunity and social norms disfavouring them, girls and young women are often regarded as less worthy of investment or protection from their families, resulting in early marriage and motherhood. Investments in their education, health, protection from violence, and economic opportunity enable them to realize their human rights.
If we invest in a girl, she will contribute to economic growth, when she becomes a woman.
There is clear and convincing evidence, that investing in girl-specific resources in the areas of education, health services, reproductive health, and financial literacy leads to better educated, safer, healthier, and economically powerful adolescent girls. This can contribute to a substantially better future not just for the individual girls, but for their families, communities, and our world. Every year of schooling increases a girl’s individual earning power by 10 to 20 per cent, while the return on secondary education is even higher, in the 15 to 25 per cent range.
Girls’ education is proven to increase not only wage earners but also productivity for employers, yielding benefits for the community and society. Those women who have control of their own income tend to have fewer children, and fertility rates have shown to be inversely related to national income growth. Girls and young women delaying marriage and having fewer children mean a bigger change of increasing per capita income, higher savings, and more rapid growth. When women and girls earn income, they reinvest 90 per cent of it into their families. The impact of investing in girls is intergenerational. A mother with a few years of formal education is considerably more likely to send her children to school, breaking the intergenerational chain of poverty. The choices and opportunities available to adolescent girls will determine in many respects our global future in stabilizing world population and in breaking the cycle of poverty in service of prosperity and security. It is imperative that the international community summon the wisdom and resources needed to prepare, respect, empower and protect adolescent girls.
When a teenage girl has the power, the means and the weapon to make her own decisions in life, she is more likely to overcome obstacles that stand between her and a healthy, productive future. This will benefit her, her family and her community at a large.
(Dr Das teaches English in a Government college who can be mailed at Subhashree.das1201@gmail.com)