Blog 5: Educating Girls Like Chrissie Can Save A Nation

Joyce Banda, the president of Malawi, is only one of fourteen female presidents in the world. She became the second president of an African country in April and since then she has sought to improve health and educational opportunities for women and girls in her country. In a country where secondary education for girls is hard to afford, girls get married and pregnant early. Often women have no choice but to give birth in deplorable conditions that pose risk to the health and safety of the mothers and their children. In one example given by the president (and speaker in the article) a mother loss her child as soon as she was born because the lights were out in the hospital. The president of Malawi is concerned with the general population (men, women, and children) of her country but I think this article speaks overwhelmingly on how important it is for conditions to women to improve, starting with an adequate education. I used the tools given to us during the Discussion 2 assignment to compare the education rate for females in Malawi to that of education rates in North America. In primary education I was surprised to see that Malawi was ahead of the United States, Bermuda, and Canada in female enrollment. But this trend was not withstanding and at the secondary education level Malawi fell behind North America albeit by a small margin. The importance of having a secondary education is that it affords more opportunity and chances for improvement. President Banda stated that her childhood friend had been unable to continue her education and thus was married young and went on to have many children. Because of these things her friend was stuck in a cycle of poverty. Staying in school longer means that chances for jobs and opportunities for advancement increase. Also girls who are in school are probably less likely to get married while attending school and will have more time to focus on their studies than the alternative of child rearing and managing their household. 

Original Article: http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/25/opinion/banda-women-poverty/index.html

Supplementary Resource(s): http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=se_prm_enrl_fe_zs&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&ifdim=region&tdim=true&ind=false#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=se_sec_enrl_fe_zs&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:BMU:CAN:USA:MWI&idim=region:NAC&ifdim=region&tstart=717652800000&tend=1096344000000&hl=en_US&dl=en_US&ind=false