Is Education The Key For Global Empowerment?

“Women aren’t the problem but the solution. The plight of girls is no more a tragedy than an opportunity” (Kristof & WuDunn, 2009, p. xviii). This quote does an excellent job of introducing the issues discussed in the book Half the Sky. In this book, Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn present us with the issue of the unjust and cruel treatment of women in today’s world. Women throughout the world are treated in unthinkably bad ways, but the majority of people are not even aware of the suffering these women face on a daily basis. According to Kristof and WuDunn (2009), “Women aged fifteen through forty-four are more likely to be maimed or die from male violence than from cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and war combined” (p. 61). However, Kristof and WuDunn (2009) also point out that if something dramatic such as a school shooting or bombing takes place, it makes breaking news, and everyone is aware of it all at once (p. xiv). Plenty of women are being mistreated every minute of

Detailing the struggles faced by women across the developing world, Half the Sky is an emotional and compelling text providing insight into issues that are essentially, a world away. Half the Sky covers with great depth the hardships and injustices that women are faced with – often as a direct result of cultural, political or economic forces. Throughout the chapters of this book, I was made aware of hardships I had never thought to look into – and have begun to think of the real world implications of my actions, and how I may alter those actions to have a greater impact on disenfranchised populations around the world.

From the beginning of the book, Half the Sky, the stories of Srey Rath, the vibrant girl from Cambodia, and Meena Hasina, the courageous mother from India, and other stories like theirs have helped many people understand the tragedies taking place all over the world. Their stories have inspired the authors and many who have read their stories to dive deeper into thought about worldwide issues plaguing many countries, including the United States. The global issues surrounding women’s health in the beginning of this book include the topics of: the three types of abuses, the inaccuracy of the term “sex trafficking”, and the initiatives to stop slavery.

The strongest claim the author made was that the economy and education are highly intertwined. It is stated that without a public access to a higher level of education, the income equality will grow larger and our country of democracy and prosperity will be in jeopardy. The

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, illuminates the essential rights that all children have. According to the Convention, each child has the privilege of education, it is the state 's obligation to guarantee that essential education is free and necessary, to allow distinctive types of secondary training, including general and professional training and to make them open to each child and to make advanced education accessible (United Nations, 1990). But as indicated by UNICEF, an expected 93 million kids on the planet don 't get the chance to go to school, the majority whom are girls. A large part of these children are poor and their families can 't stand to send them to school. They should work to help their families survive. Others, for the most part, young girls don 't go to school since they need to help at home. However, without an education, children and families are forced to lead an existence in poverty (UNICEF, 2015).

This book is a crucial dose of reality for those of us that are spoiled by the comforts we have grown used too. Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn explain in the book “Half the Sky” why empowering women in the developing world is ethically right and extremely vital.It is a gripping story of how customs and culture have historically oppressed women. The strength of the human rights movement and of actual change across all cultures is going to be asteadfast task of courageous women who give themselves permission to say no to so many years of unthinkable tyrannical cultural customs and fight for a new way of life. Many of us close our eyes

The book “Global Woman” edited by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild focuses on the lives of women that leave their third world country to work in homes as nannies or servants and others even sex work. These women take on that labor without knowing what results will come from their desperate action. The authors explain and recount the stories of many of the women whom have had to sacrifice their lives. These women sacrifice it all to provide for themselves and their families and give them a better life, this is told through different chapters.

Imagine leaving everyone and everything you have ever known to go to a new unknown world and make money to help your family. The amount of stress and anxiety might be too much to handle at first. This was the life of many young women from small villages in Nepal, looking to do whatever it takes to keep a roof on their family’s head. Desperate times call for desperate measures, but what these women expected in the work is not what they got. They were sold into sex slavery, unaware on the struggles they would have to endure in their lives.

“Education leads to a brighter future.” Quite a clichéd phrase, actually. So popular, that people tend to forget the true significance of it. It is known that Latin America faces numerous problems that makes looking into the future a discouraging view; but we fail to realize the lack of education may be the root of these issues, including violence, unemployment and poverty. Even though education is widely available in Latin America, people are not yet engrained with the idea that education can be a facilitator for a superior life. Economic issues that stem from unemployment and poverty have led to the notion that education is wasted time that could be better spent

In the United States, boys and girls are able to get the right, equal, and proper education. The girls aren’t forced to do something they don’t want to do like get married at an early age and not receive their education. Also, in the US kids do value their education, but I don’t know if all kids know how lucky they really are to be educated because some kids in other countries aren’t able to get educated. For example, in Afghanistan girls have suffered a lot, particularly in education, during several decades. However, in some parts of Afghanistan after decades of refusal, girls are being allowed to go to school again but in the mountains of Afghanistan hope for girls’ education is massive.

The proportion of children who are enrolled in primary schools has increased from 49% to 77% in the past decade in sub-Saharan Africa. This increase in enrollment is due mostly to the initiative of the governments from these regions to improve universal primary education. However, much remains to be done because even though enrollment has been made a possibility in a lot of these countries, there are a lot of other variables at play that still prevent children from receiving a quality education. Things such as poverty, cultural traditions, gender violence, and the incidence of early marriage are a major reason for disadvantaged groups, particularly poor girls, not making as much progress in enrolling

Education is important for so many other reasons and because we live in America we as women have the right to and education. This gives us opportunities that we didn’t get a long time ago, and gives people from other countries like third world countries give women a chance to be workers and not just house wives. We can use our accomplishments to get a good job a nice house, and prove men the women can do it as well. I am given a chance to work and support my family and that’s all I want.

As a result of poverty and marginalization, more than 72 million children around the world remain unschooled. Sub-Saharan Africa is the most affected area with over 32 million children of primary school age remaining uneducated. Central and Eastern Asia, as well as the Pacific, are also severely affected by this problem with more than 27 million uneducated children. In addition, these regions must also resolve continuing problems of educational poverty (a child in education for less than 4 years) and extreme educational poverty (a child in education for less than 2 years) (Omwami & Keller, 2010).

Although they have been given more rights and equality, women still lack fairness in areas such as education, domestic abuse, crime, and lower class value. Cassandra Clifford states in her article “Are Girls still marginalized? Discrimination and Gender Inequality in Today’s Society”, “Woman and girls are abused by their husbands and fathers, young girls are exploited by sex tourism and trafficking, girls in many countries are forced into arranged marriages at early ages. Twice as many women are illiterate as men, due to the large gap in education, and girls are still less likely to get jobs and excel in the work place than boys.” She describes some of the issues that women face today around the world. These issues are what keep society from coming together to form a better world.

Education is considered as the critical software for development as it shapes the destiny for every society. Currently the initiative is driven by the Millennium Development Goals and the goals of Education for All. The MDG’s with direct reference to women education are Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education and Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women. This means that everybody in the society should be given a chance to attend school, women included (Anne Syomwene , 2015)