Welcome to Blog for International Women’s Day 2011! #blogforiwd #iwd2011

Today is International Women’s Day!  The 100th anniversary no less, since celebrations for Women’s Day can be traced back to 1911! Following its establishment during the Socialist International meeting women in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland took to the streets to celebrate.  Now 100 years later, GAB is asking you to take to the keyboards!

To celebrate this year’s Women’s Day GAB would like you to share your thoughts on this year’s theme:  Equal access to education, training and science and technology for women.

To get the discussion rolling we’ve suggested two questions:

1. What does it mean to have access to education, training and science and technology for women, and how do we achieve it?

2. What organization or moment in history helped to mobilize a meaningful change in equal access to education, training and science and technology for women?

I, a Junior Editor at GAB, couldn’t help but answer our own questions:

1. In many developing countries girls aren’t given the opportunity to attend school.  Studies are expensive, unavailable or a right reserved only for boys, it is boys after all who will grow up and contribute to the economic development of their family, community and country.  Wrong.  When girls and women earn an income they reinvest 90% of it into their family, in comparison to 30-40% by boys and men.  This extra money will help family lift themselves out of poverty, communities flourish and countries prosper. But these changes won’t happen unless girls are given the opportunity to attend school.  Easier said than done.  Approximately 70% of the world’s out-of-school youth are girls.  Typically poverty, cultural taboos, stereotypes and biases keep girls away from the books. This is why the theme of this year’s International Women’s Day is so important.  Equal access to educations, training, science and technology for women is about much more than attending school, dissecting a frog or using a computer, it’s about reshaping the very gender imbalance that exists around the world.  It’s about making people realize that girls and women matter, that they are worthwhile and that they are the key to development and peace .

2.  The Girl Effect is an organization that is making leaps and bounds in advocating for girls’ right to education. Through extensive research The Girl Effect clearly demonstrates international development depends on adolescent girls.  One might not think that access to education, a basic human right, needs to be framed as a development issue for it to be realized but in much of the world and among many of it’s leaders this is the case. Through advocacy The Girl Effect encourages international policy makers, state governments and individuals to put girls education at the fore of their efforts to develop and prosper.  Although the obstacles are enormous for girls when it comes to education, they are not insurmountable and The Girl Effect, demonstrates that these challenges must be met for the world to be a better place for all.

Now I hope you’ll share your views too!  Happy International Women’s Day!

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