In search of the 'Magic pill'

When a friend posted the Nike “Girl Effect” video on Facebook, one of his friends commented – “I challenge you to prove to me that staying in school = job, … and that by being educated she isn't also ostracized from the social network that can help her survive if she isn't excessively exploited…….Yes, I know "stop prostitution, build schools" is more compelling, but I'm unconvinced …[education]….is a solution.”

Had it been one of my own friends, I would probably have taken her down in a tackle and punched her on the nose a couple of times, but this was a friend of a friend, and I didn’t want to engage in a fight on someone else’s wall. And I am glad I stopped to take a breath before reacting, because when I thought about it, I realized she was right. 

As a proponent of educating girls and women, the last thing I want is for someone to question the effectiveness of education in solving a social problem that has existed for generations, but when you really think about it, the lady was right.

Girls’ Education is NOT a magic pill that you can force down the throat of an unwilling society, and expect it to cure centuries of oppression and neglect. Education alone does not make any difference to the status of women in either the household or the community. Education does not necessarily lead to financial independence, and financial independence does not imply social justice.

Though it pains me to say so, educating girls and women is not ‘The Solution’.

Let us for a moment forget the female foetuses that are killed in the womb, the female babies that are abandoned soon after birth, and the girls that are allowed to die due to malnutrition and neglect. Let us think only of the girls who are lucky enough to be allowed to reach their fifth birthdays.

Let us think about Arthi who is grudgingly allowed to go to the local government school, provided she milks the goats first thing in the morning, and fetches water from a well 5 miles away after she gets back home from school. While her male classmates are playing cricket, she’s busy helping her mother cook dinner, and long after everyone retires for the night, she tries to finish her homework in the light of a flickering lamp. Arthi still manages to keep up with her studies, but the day her mother falls ill after delivering a male child, she is expected to drop out of school and mind her baby brother. She is seven, but her life is all but over. No more dreaming of becoming a doctor and serving humanity.

She knows that she will be kept at home to mind a succession of younger siblings, and be married off to a much older man soon after she attains puberty.
She might remember her dreams, and try to ensure her daughters get an education, but dreams are not always something you can afford when you are trying desperately to keep a family together on a meagre income.

Building a school would not have made any difference to Arthi’s life, because her family decided they were better off using her as a full-time unpaid help.

Let us think about Urmila who managed to stay in school long enough to graduate. The nearest college is in a city 100 miles away, and even if they could afford it, her parents would not allow her to leave home for fear of the stigma that would attach itself to a girl who lived “alone in an alien city”. Her high school graduation certificate is of no use in helping her get a job in her village, and she is eventually left with no choice but to allow her family to marry her off to the first man who will have her.

Her husband grudges her the independence of thought that an education has given her, and works hard to stamp out her spirit. To survive, she leans to curb her tongue and accede to whatever is demanded of her. She does her best to encourage other girls to study and dream big, and when the time comes, she will move to the city herself so her daughter can go to college.
But a high school education did not leave Urmila any better off than she would have been if she had dropped out of school after primary school.

Let us think about Sukriti who studied and became a teacher in the local village school. She earns more than any of her brothers, but is expected to hand over her entire earnings to her father. Few men are willing to even consider marrying her, and her father deters the few that are because he doesn’t want to give up on a reliable source of money. She has no say in any of the decisions that the family makes, she is excluded from social activities because of her unmarried status, and though she loves teaching young girls, she wonders if this is the life she expected when she fought society to be allowed to realize her dreams.

Sukriti is educated and has a good job, but financial earnings have not translated into social or economic independence for her.

Building schools has not made too much of a difference to Arthi, Urmila or Sukriti. Clearly education is NOT a magic pill. It is not a magic-pill, because the problem is not a simple one. The status of women is linked to poverty and to the rural-urban divide. It is the product of generations of oppression in the household, and centuries of being denied their rightful place in society.

When the problem is as deep rooted in tradition and poverty as the condition of women in some parts of the world, the solution cannot be a simple one. Society needs to accept women as useful citizens and not merely as breeding machines; families need to move from a patriarchal mode to a more equitable one; communities need to train themselves to hear the voice of women. None of that can happen in a day, a month, a decade or even a generation.

Change has to be gradual. Change has to start somewhere. And Education is as good a place to start as any other. Girls who go to school learn to look beyond the constraints a patriarchal society has placed on them. They look at a future beyond the traditional "female" occupations which ultimately boil down to pleasing men in some way, and start thinking for themselves.

And that is definitely the first step towards a change which may well take more than one generation to manifest itself in.

Education of girls and women is not a magic pill, but it is the logical place to start. And we owe it to Her to start.

_____

All photographs taken by the writer, and not to be used without prior written permission.

Topical Tuesday- Girl Effect

Last week, I found myself in Rural India. Not a place where I would normally find myself, but when you work for a non-profit stranger things happen. Calling the place a village may be a bit of an exaggeration - it was a hamlet of 17 homes, most of them little more than rude huts. And the entire population of the village could be captured in one frame -

It was a village forgotten by progress. Where people were no better off than they must have been a century ago. Where livestock and farming were the the only livelihood options; both barely enough to keep people out of poverty.

But what you noticed most about the village was the fact that women outnumbered men almost two to one. It was not that every family in the village produced more girls than boys, it was just that the men had all migrated to the nearby towns and cities in search of work, leaving the women behind.

And a highly articulate bunch of women they were.

There was the 17-year-old girl who had been forced to drop out of school in Grade 8, because she needed to take care of her sick mother. The girl had a better grasp of the problems facing her village than any other person of her age, and she was willing to try out new ideas that might bring increased prosperity.
"What is your deepest desire?" I asked her.
Pat came the answer - "I want to continue my studies, and do something that improves the quality of life in the village."
She clearly knew where her priorities were.

There was the grandmother of indeterminate age who had got her friends together to form an Emergency Fund. All the women contributed Rs. 100 ($ 2.50) a month to the Fund, which they would dig into in case of medical emergency, to fund small community driven projects, and to meet various contingency expenses. The lady didn't need much prodding to stand up and explain why the women had decided to create the Fund. "There is no way we can predict when we will need money," she said. "And when we need money, nobody has any to spare. This way, we each put away a little bit when we can, and we can all benefit." Was she encouraged by stories of the Microfinance Revolution? She'd never even heard of it, and couldn't be too bothered by it either. Her solution was to take care of a specific problem - it if corresponded to a type, she was not particularly bothered about it.
Would she consider entering local politics?
Why should she? What would politics give her that she did not already have?

The women brought home the fact of the Girl Effect better than many slickly produced videos. Enable women, and you can change the world. And if it takes a video to get that message across, I am more than happy to give it screen space -