Women’s education, empowerment and gender equality are among the most crucial factors of development in the twenty-first century, especially in the developing nations. It is very to examine the assumptions under which projects, programmes, and policies are formulated towards this goals. Empowerment is tied to the range of activities women take in different areas of education being the most important. Action and women’s concerns pertaining to education and empowerment greatly increased since the UN Declaration in 1975 (Arat 23). Be it in skills acquisition or consciousness-raising, organizations, governments, and donor agencies are taking this matter into focus. It was assumed for long that empowerment would follow women only when they knew their rights and learned skills deprived of them. Based on continuity, the roles played by education should not only be underlined but also investigated thoroughly.
This paper will discuss the aspects of gender equality and women rights to education. In addition, the reasons as to why it is very key to educate girls and women for a better-developed society will be presented.
Women’s Right to Education
The Global News YouTube video (“Malala Yousafzai and Justin Trudeau talk”) features Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai and Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. They are in a panel talk at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The topic of discussion is the importance of education in empowering women and girls in developing nations.
Yousafzai starts off by saying that we all want to see change as far as social dialogue things pertaining to the empowerment of women and just education. She states that education is the only way for women empowerment. Bringing change is not the job of one person but rather it involves everyone since each has a significant role to play. Whether at the government level, business level, NGO level or local activist level. She says that this is something she has recognized from the beginning and in response to that Malala fund is empowering and reaching out to local advocates in Pakistan, Nigeria, Latin America, and India. They are being empowered so that the can bring change to their local communities. Specific examples that could enhance this change which includes teachers training, bringing STEM skills, and giving eLearning.
Moreover, Malala Fund is focusing on empowering girls for they are the future in giving them a voice so they can speak out for their rights and about the issues they are facing. In as much as she has done that and is continuing to do so, she says that governments, presidents, prime ministers as well as other leaders have a big role to play. The role is to ensure that women have access to quality education, and opportunities. A number of countries especially Canada are leading in that role by stepping forward. Yousafzai says she is looking forward to the steps the G7 will be taking.
Once again Yousafzai emphasizes that it is everyone’s role to take part in this. The business sector should consider investing in the education and empowerment of women. The returns and the profits are high not to mention the low opportunity cost. Investing in a girl is investing in her future and in turn impacting the nation in regard to economic growth, reduce poverty, helps to tackle climate change, reduce child labor, child trafficking, and early child marriages. In other words, the benefits and challenges are countless. This should stir us up to take a step of investing in education which calls for donor countries, developing countries, the business sector, and governments come and play their role.
There is still much to be done despite the progress in order to assess the degree to which education will continue to empower women. The diversity of the work done to ensure the education and women’s empowerment calls for activists, educators, and researchers to take part collectively in addressing the challenges faced. Empowerment is rendered difficult to be defined due to its nature. To many development projects and programs, it is simply a goal. Also, it can be conceived as a process in which people go through and lead to change in the end. It can be considered as a process where one acquires, provides and bestows the means and resources in order to enable access to control over resources and such means. In addition, it can be a process where the power distribution of institutions and interpersonal relations is changed cutting across the whole society. With this, the categories of people in the indigenous societies, the poor, and the illiterate are all cut across but women are the most affected.
Gender Equality
Empowerment has different levels on its own and is in one way or the other dictated by cultural contexts. Components of empowerment as a means of enhancing gender equality include the political, economic, psychological, and cognitive (Christens et al. 17). The women’s ability to organize and mobile for change lies in the political component. In this, both collective and individual awareness along with collective action must be involved. In regard to the economic component, women are required to be engaged in productive activities that will allow them some extent of being autonomous. The psychological component contains a structure in which women develop feelings that they can act in relation to improving their condition as a positive transformational belief. The cognitive component entails the understanding of women on their conditions of subordination and their cause. This components altogether give women options that strengthen them creating a bargaining power. Moreover, women will be relieved from their heavy workload that brings more harm than good. Education will lower the high number of illiteracy levels which is most evident in developing countries which will result in women taking formal jobs. The collective action ensures women are brought together thus significantly reducing or eliminating the isolation of women from each other.
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru once said that if a man is educated, an individual is educated, but if a woman is educated the whole family is educated (Shetty " Hans 31). It is only through educating women that their unexplored potential will be tapped. Beyond literacy, education can do much in for women’s security, dignity, and rights. Education offers an open door to development in every aspect of our life. Being a basic requirement and a fundamental right for citizens in many nations, there are many people specifically women who are deprived of having it. Education on its own is a very powerful tool used for reducing inequality an issue the society is striving to overcome in order to move forward. As a tool, it helps women change their position in the social function as a means of improving their status in the family. An avenue to acquire learning and practical information is provided to them that extends beyond to improve not only their lives but also the lives of those around them. As a milestone in economic development, empowered women play a crucial role in shaping a country’s economy.
Empowering women enables them to realize their powers and identity in all spheres of their lives. This results in freedom from custom shackles that limit them, autonomy in decision making, practices and beliefs, as well as the increased access to resources and knowledge. Denying women the access to these opportunities means sacrificing growth and development creating issues that end up becoming areas of concern not just for them but for the entire society at large. Since empowerment enables women to acquire techniques, skills, and knowledge that help in personal and social growth, a sensitivity towards social problems is fostered. In response to this, special efforts need to be taken for their employment, health, and education. Strategies that enhance women’s capacity to meet the negative economic and social impacts should be designed adjacent to the flowing process of globalization (Gupta 54). Negligence and exploitation spring up from lack of education. Only education and literacy can help women to be enlightened in understanding the legislative and constitutional provision that is made for their own advancement. Educated women will greatly participate in nation-building.
Conclusion
The means of achieving gender equity with dignity is by empowerment and education. Intervention, especially by governments, with approaches and assigned roles for women is highly required to be executed in a systematic manner. Both in methodology and concept, women empowerment and women development are correlated (Hanmer " Klugman 73). This implies that promoting women education, in turn, results in promoting their empowerment in relation to nurturing and sustaining a culture of equity dignity and unity.
Works Cited
Arat, Zehra F. Kabasakal. "Feminisms, Women's Rights, and the UN: Would Achieving Gender Equality Empower Women?." American Political Science Review 109.4 (2015): 674-689.
Christens, Brian D., Jessica J. Collura, and Faizan Tahir. "Critical hopefulness: A person-centered analysis of the intersection of cognitive and emotional empowerment." American Journal of Community Psychology 52.1-2 (2013): 170-184.
Global News. “Malala Yousafzai and Justin Trudeau talk education and women's empowerment at WEF.” YouTube, 25 Jan 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ErrQWp_xh0
Gupta, Kavita. "Globalization and Women Empowerment." Journal of Social Sciences " Multidisciplinary Management Studies 1.1 (2017): 1-4.
Hanmer, Lucia, and Jeni Klugman. "Exploring women's agency and empowerment in developing countries: Where do we stand?." Feminist Economics 22.1 (2016): 237-263.
Shetty, Sowjanya, and V. Hans. "Role of Education in Women Empowerment and Development: Issues and Impact." (2015).
