This Monday was National Education Day in India, and education around the world is never far from the headlines—and is central to the lives of everyone, especially women and girls. Today we’re focusing on education stories. We look at inspirational women educators, access to education, the gender gap in education, using education itself to empower girls and women as well as to educate boys and men, the crucial role education plays in women’s professional advancement, and more. From grade school classrooms to higher education, financial literacy, and advancement in the workplace; education lifts us all.
National Education Day: 7 Inspirational Quotes From Women Educators, from Republic World—“‘Our patriarchal societies, especially the communities we work with, do not really appreciate their mindsets being questioned. And there I was going home to home, investigating their girls and talking about their right to have an education! I remember having countless doors slammed in my face and the mistreatments hurled at me and my team. They would call us mad dogs!’ said Safeena Hussain, an active social worker and the founder and Executive Director at Educate Girls, a nonprofit organisation that is headquartered in Mumbai, India.”
Agents of Change: On Investing in Women’s Education, from The Hindu—“Development economists have long studied the role that education of girls plays in enabling them to emerge as agents of change. Empirical work in recent years, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen reasons, has clearly shown how the relative aspect and regard for women’s well being is strongly influenced by women’s literacy and educated participation in decisions within and outside the family. In the late 1990s, Tamil Nadu along with the Danish International Development Agency, launched a mass rural literacy project in Dharmapuri, then considered backward, riding largely on local leaders, most of them women. […] There is a body of compelling evidence for the government to focus on improving female literacy.”
Brown Girls Do Invest Launches Financial Education Tour for Black Women, from Black Enterprise—“I am passionate about African American women feeling inclusive in the wealth conversation. It is important that we understand ways we impact the economy. African American women have a voice and want to be heard. Our stories are different, yet the goal for financial freedom is just as important as anyone else.”
Americans’ Improving Views of Women’s Competence. And How Higher Education Helped., from Forbes—“The second trend is the dramatic gain in women’s success in higher education, manifest by an across-the-board surge in degree completion and a strong college completion edge for women over men. Currently, women earn the majority of bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees awarded to Americans, an advantage they’ve maintained – and even lengthened – for years, and gradually those degrees are shifting to fields once seen as bastions of masculine dominance.”
The Boys Learning Anti-Sexism in India, from BBC Future—“When solutions focus solely on women, ‘what you’re not doing is not changing the flow of the current,’ [Christina Furtado, executive director of ECF] says. ‘Because at the end of the day, educated and empowered women will go home with violent and abusive men.’ In AFE, boys aged 13 to 17 spend 43 weeks studying education curricula designed to teach them about gender-based violence, disrupt gender norms, and make their communities more equitable and safer for women and girls.”
African Women Face Persistent Gender Gaps in Education and Jobs, from allAfrica.com—“Despite widespread popular support for gender equality, African women are still disadvantaged by persistent gender gaps in education, employment, control over key assets, and access to technology, an Afrobarometer has revealed.”
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