From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

2 POWER AND POLITICS I READ, THEREFORE I AMEducating women and girls is particularly important because itenables them to challenge inequality with men, within the family andin wider society. Educated women tend to have healthier childrenand smaller families, suggesting that education is linked to greaterbargaining power in marriage. Education makes it more likely that awoman can earn money of her own, which means she is more likelyto be able to remain single if she chooses, or to leave an abusive orunhappy relationship. Education can also break down the stereotypesof women’s and men’s roles in society which restrict the horizons ofboth girls and boys, and girls in particular can gain the self-confidenceto challenge discrimination.Globally, significant progress is being made in reducing the numberof children of primary-school age who are not enrolled in school.Between 1999 and 2006 the number fell by around 21 million to 72million. 33 The spread of primary education has halved levels of illiteracysince 1970, greatly improving the quality of life of millions of poorpeople. Still, some 780 million adults (one in five worldwide) lackbasic literacy, and two-thirds of them are women. 34 The MillenniumDevelopment Goal of achieving gender parity in primary enrolmentby 2005 (the only MDG to specifically target inequality) was missed bya wide margin.The glass is half full in other areas: enrolment in secondary school isincreasing rapidly, although there is still a long way to go, especially insub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Perhaps the most extraordinaryprogress has been in university and other higher education, whereworldwide the number of students enrolled rose 43 per cent between1999 and 2004 to 132 million. Three-quarters of this growth took placein developing countries, with China alone accounting for 60 per cent. 35Key reasons behind the increases in school enrolment achievedover the past decade, particularly for girls, include the removal ofschool fees, economic growth, and urbanisation (which reduces thecost to the state of providing schools). Public pressure has also playeda role: national grassroots campaigns in 120 countries, co-ordinatedby the Global Campaign for Education, obliged governments to spendsignificantly more on primary education. 36 Education budgets increasedin two-thirds of countries for which data are available. In Kenya thenational coalition of education groups, Elimu Yetu (Our Education),43