Why is poverty such a major barrier to education, especially among older girls in Africa?
Millennium Development Goal 2 is to ‘achieve Universal Education for boys and girls’. MDG 3 is to ‘Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education’.
When I was recently in Zambia, I became aware of the complex cultural dynamic that holds many girls back from achieving a high school education in many sub-Saharan countries. The cultural norm is that girls are required to complete a range of household tasks at the beginning and end of each day while their brothers are exempted from what is perceived as ‘women’s work’.
Many girls rise at dawn to go and collect water, start a fire and cook her family breakfast. Once her duties are complete she will walk anywhere from one to three hours to get to school. By the time she gets to school she is already tired and less likely to be able to concentrate. A lack of performance in the classroom often results in a rebuke from the teacher who is not concerned with the familial responsibilities undertaken outside of school hours.
Once a girl’s menstrual cycle begins the classroom can become challenging in a whole new way. Living in poverty, many African girls lack funds to purchase sanitary products and many lack adequate underwear to address their physical needs during this awkward time. Tired from her home commitments, feeling guilty from her rebuking and often embarrassed in the classroom by personal hygiene accidents, many girls will miss a week of a school each month in order to manage this stage of their adolescent development. From there it is a small step to dropping out of school altogether and reinforcing the existing cycle of poverty. Who would have thought that access to underwear and sanitary resources could be the difference between achieving an education and dropping out of school!