By Reneeka Chatterjee
Educating the girl child is a smart economic and social investment, and not a burden.
An empowered and educated girl child becomes a woman of substance who is a valuable asset to the nation. In India, many girls still lack access to secondary education. Enrolment in schools at the secondary education level is still low for girls in India. It is common knowledge that not all girls, especially in the rural regions, who have enrolled in schools at the primary education level also opt for enrolling at the secondary education level.
The long-term benefits of educating the girl child are plenty. Parents all over the country should understand how investing in their daughters’ schooling can lead to economic stability, improved health outcomes, and overall well-being. If girls are equipped with life skills, financial literacy, negotiation, and decision-making skills, they emerge as more resilient individuals.
Addressing the challenges that girls face involves engaging with communities, promoting awareness, and fostering a cultural shift towards recognising and valuing education for girls.
Why do so many girls in India still drop out of school at the secondary education level?
Girls in India drop out of school for various reasons. A few reasons include limited school options, unawareness of schools, and lack of adequate infrastructure in schools. Often, schools are far away and parents are concerned of the safety of the girls. Lack of quality infrastructure in schools in rural India, such as dirty toilets, or lack of running water, or unhygienic practices, also encourage parents to stop their daughters’ schooling and education. On the contrary, it is remarkable that schools that provide free midday meals, or ensure access to products like sanitary napkins, encourage parents to send their children to school.
Girls also drop out due to financial constraints because their parents are unable to pay their school fees and bear the costs of their uniforms, books, stationery sets, transportation facilities, and so on. Due to poverty and high cost of education, many families are unable to provide for their daughters’ higher studies.
Girls also drop out due to lack of parental support and financial aid. Many parents still hold lower educational aspirations for daughters and want the girls to primarily engage in household chores. Gender inequality, just like patriarchy, is a social evil that is deeply ingrained in our society.
Many parents also believe that girls are burdens and must be married off at an early age, and educating the girls is of no use. Cultural and social practices such as child marriage and teenage pregnancies further compel young girls to sacrifice their education.
Girls who are educated lead healthier and more productive lives. With education comes empowerment. With education comes financial independence. When girls are educated, they are able to decide their futures better, and are able to build better futures for themselves and their families. Every girl who stays in school contributes not only to her own future but also to a more prosperous world.
How does education change a girl’s life?
Girls who are educated are less likely to get married young and are less likely to be forced into child marriages. This, consequently, reduces the number of teenage pregnancies in the country. Empowered women can make their own decisions and have greater control over their own lives. Hence, educated women can plan their families better and can have smaller families.
Furthermore, teenage pregnancies and unwanted pregnancies after child marriage often lead to higher child mortality rates. Child mortality rates also fall when young girls are educated and empowered, and avoid unwanted pregnancies. Women with lower levels of educational attainment are more likely to get married below 18 years of age. Education is a key driver of women’s empowerment and plays a significant role in reducing child marriages.
Many girls in rural India report that there is no point in continuing their secondary education as they could not have pursued further studies as an excuse for dropping out of school at the secondary education level. A significant number of girls every year report that they dropped out of school due to lack of parental support. Astonishingly, many girls also reveal that they dropped out of school as they had to take care of their siblings at home.
Many reveal child marriage as the reason. Furthermore, a huge number of girls in the rural regions report household chores as a reason for dropping out of school at the secondary education level. Many of these young girls are found to be married. This suggests that the number of teenage married girls who are also pregnant is significantly high all over the country.
What are the drastic implications of young girls dropping out of school?
When girls get married at a tender age, their bodies are often unable to handle unwanted pregnancies. According to the World Bank, each year of secondary education has the capacity to reduce the likelihood of marrying before the age of 18 by nearly 5% or more in many countries.
Teenage pregnancies not only lead to higher infant mortality rates but may also lead to higher numbers of deaths of the mothers. Teenage pregnancies are associated with poorer health outcomes for both the mother and the child. According to the UNESCO, if all mothers in India had completed secondary education, the under-five mortality rate would have been nearly 61% lower.
This, in turn, increases the overall costs of healthcare, and reduces the quality of healthcare facilities in the country. It is estimated that universal secondary education for girls could reduce teenage pregnancies by a significantly high percentage. According to key data from the CRY-CIFF study, expansion of secondary education among girls could reduce likelihood of teenage pregnancies by nearly 90%, which is an alarmingly high percentage.
How does complete education for girls benefit the girl child as well as the society, at large?
The World Bank reveals that one year of secondary education for the girl child can increase their wages by up to 25% later in life. This suggests that one additional year of secondary education results in an income premium of around 25% for girls. Thus, secondary education for girls is an investment, and girls are not a burden in society. In fact, educated girls are assets. Limited educational opportunities and barriers to completing 12 years of education for girls cost countries a significant share of their GDP.
Increasing female participation in the workforce is linked to higher GDP, better economic outcomes, more rapid economic growth, and higher investment returns. Female labour force participation can be further improved with the help of supportive policies. Every year of schooling increases a girl’s future earnings. This translates into a total lifetime income gain of 309 to 330 lakh crore rupees (4,212 to 4,497 billion U.S. dollars) for the entire country’s total population, as per key data from the CRY-CIFF study. Thus, secondary education for the girl child breaks the cycle of poverty for her and for her children.
India is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. India has one of the brightest opportunities in the world to boost its GDP by promoting and encouraging women’s equality. According to data available in the public domain, India’s GDP can stand at a gain of nearly 770 billion U.S. dollars by 2025 if universalisation of secondary education for girls becomes a reality in India. This implies that India has the potential to experience an addition of 770 billion USD to its GDP by 2025.
When girls are educated, they develop skills. Increased productivity and reduced poverty lead to a more skilled workforce. Educated girls contribute significantly towards creating a more dynamic workforce that consists of skilled workers, leading to greater productivity and higher levels of innovation. If 10% more adolescent girls attend school, a country’s GDP can increase by an average of 3%.
A mother who is educated also educates her daughters. Not only does an educated mother have fewer children but an educated mother also educates her own children, thus breaking the circle of poverty, and reducing income inequalities in the country. A child whose mother knows how to read and write is 50% more likely to live past the age of five.
Investing in girls’ secondary education yields innumerable social and economic benefits. There lies a strong positive correlation between secondary education for girls and a range of positive outcomes such as increased participation of women in the formal labour sector with higher wages, improved health outcomes, delayed marriages, well-planned families with fewer children, and the ability to provide better educational and healthcare facilities to their offspring.
According to the World Bank, girls with secondary education experience several benefits. These include increased likelihood of employment with higher wages, more skilled jobs in the formal labour market, delayed marriages, lower fertility rates, fewer children, well-planned families, improved health outcomes for the children, greater decision-making power of women within households, improved overall well-being of women, increased civic participation of women, stronger communities, and so on.
Girls who are educated have the confidence and the courage to stand up for themselves, and fight for their own rights. Many girls don’t even know that they all have the right to education, and that education is a fundamental right for all children. When girls are educated, they grow into confident women who stand up against domestic violence, thus reducing the rates of violence in households. Crime rates also reduce when girls are empowered to stand up for themselves and face the world.
What measures should be implemented to encourage girls to complete their education and join the labour force?
The new National Education Policy (NEP) in India aims for universal access to education for all children aged 3 to 18, irrespective of their gender, making secondary education mandatory for all children. Women often face discrimination on the basis of gender and ability in the workforce. Payment disparities, longer working hours for women, and lower-income jobs for women, are only a few ways in which women continue to face discrimination in the workforce. Women who are educated and empowered have the confidence to stand up for their rights and fight for gender equality.
The labour force participation rate in India is about 50%, according to the CRY-CIFF study. The declining participation of women in the labour force is a concerning trend. Recent trends reveal that many women in India tend to not work at all, or tend to work in sectors outside the labour force. Women stay disadvantaged because existing skilling and employment generation programmes do not favour female workers, further exacerbating gender disparities.
Women face discrimination at their workplace due to which the number of women working in high-skill professions such as engineering and medicine is falling rapidly. Most women still prefer to work in “traditional” professions such as teaching.
Quotas and reservations for women might help if they are properly monitored and implemented. Due to ingrained patriarchy in society, the Government should intervene in how households typically function, by favouring women. Gender sensitivity should be incorporated in the designs of all employment and skilling schemes. Women should enjoy certain social benefits, such as state funding for maternity leave, which might encourage them to participate more willingly in the labour force.
Afterthought
The World Economic Forum in 2020 revealed that investing in girls’ education could return billions in GDP. This simply implies that investing in girls’ education yields economic benefits galore for developing countries such as India. By 2030, if all girls complete their secondary education, the GDP of several developing economies across the globe could rise by an average of 10% over the next decade. Thus, girls’ education plays a pivotal role in achieving broader societal goals like economic welfare and prosperity.
A girl child today becomes a mother tomorrow. So, it is important for us as a society to protect and preserve the rights of our girls, and to ensure that our girls have bright and prosperous futures. And that is possible only when girls have access to education and have the facilities to complete their education.
References:
1. Research Article: Evaluating Interventions to Reduce Child Marriage in India (Journal of Global Health Reports, 2021)
2. Analytical Paper: Child Marriage in India: Key Insights from the NFHS-5 (2019-21) (UNFPA)
3. Article: Educating Girls, Ending Child Marriage (World Bank, 2017)
4. Article (Press Release): Not Educating Girls Costs Countries Trillions of Dollars (2018)
5. Article on Report: How Investing in Girl’s Education Could Return Billions in GDP (World Economic Forum, 2020)
6. Article: “As A Student, I Hope Job Creation Becomes The Government’s Top Priority” (Youth Ki Awaaz, June 09 2024)
7. Book: What The Economy Needs Now (edited by Abhijit Banerjee, Gita Gopinath, Raghuram Rajan, Mihir S. Sharma, 2021)