By Julia Dowling
International Women’s day always makes me feel torn. On one hand, one day set aside for global recognition of the contributions made by and challenges facing women and girls has never seemed so critical. There seems to be a war on women everywhere: sexual health services are being cut in the United States while the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo rages on, where 15,000 women were raped just last year. But on the other hand, I often think “shouldn’t every day be international women’s day?”
Goal three of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aims to do just this – make every day a day for women by eliminating gender disparity and empowering women. The goal is to “eliminate the gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and to all levels of education no later than 2015.” The United Nations highlights education as the key to empowerment for girls and women, both in a traditional sense of schooling but also through wider educational efforts to inform men and boys of gender issues and increase gender sensitivity.
How is this relevant to Jubilee’s work though? Well, debt cancellation plays a critical role in helping to achieve Millennium Development Goal #3 through dramatically increasing access to basic education. Before the debt cancellation arrangements of 1999 and 2005, many poor countries were forced to charge school fees for primary education by the International Financial Institutions. When push came to shove and poor families could afford to send just some of their children to school, the boys were often selected over the girls to attend primary school. Thanks to such school fees, a whole generation of young and promising girls lost their chance to attend school because the education of their male counterparts was deemed more valuable.
Even after these deplorable conditions were lifted thanks to global outcry, impoverished governments had little extra revenue to spend on education after paying huge sums of debt service to international creditors. Debt cancellation meant that school fees were removed and resources once used to pay debts were freed up to be used toward the health and education sectors.
In Tanzania, children attending school increased by 50%. The country was able to build nearly 2,500 more schools and hire 28,000 more teachers. Children passing primary school increased from under 20% to over 40% within four years after the country received debt cancellation.
Just as debt cancellation isn’t Jubilee’s only concern, MDG #3 won’t be achieved simply by increasing women and girl’s presence in the classroom. Broader economic justice reforms are necessary if we want to truly change the structures that cause gender disparity and sexism. This means changing the international financial system to include the most vulnerable people, especially women from the Global South. On all levels, we need to confront the biases that hold women back from receiving the health, education, and employment opportunities they deserve.
This year’s annual Ecumenical Advocacy Days conference focuses on Women and Gender, and just how we can achieve MDG #3. Join us from March 25-28, where Jubilee will join partner organizations and more than 800 activists from across the country to explore ways to bring economic justice, education, and health to billions of vulnerable women around the world.
Images Courtesy of UNICEF and End Poverty 2015
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