Where the Girls Are Not

When the 51st United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) meets this month, an NEA-supported teacher will be there, helping to promote women’s rights across the world. For years, through its partners at Education International, a federation of global education unions, NEA has sponsored the attendance of a teacher from the developing world. This year, it’s Joan Hippolyte, vice-president of the St. Lucia Teachers’ Union in the Caribbean.

In 2007, as the CSW focuses on “the girl child” and the discrimination and violence that she too often faces, the discussion will be more important than ever. Around the world, just 61 percent of girls make it to high school, according to UNESCO. Discrimination is the chief culprit, but part of the problem, in all developing nations, is a lack of qualified teachers—especially women.

Consider Afghanistan. Despite a 500 percent increase in enrollment over the past six years, half of its children still don’t go to school, according to a new Oxfam report—and, of the current students, only about one-third are girls. The country has about 140,000 teachers now (and needs 50,000 more), but just 17 percent are high school graduates themselves. Only 28 percent are women.

NEA takes seriously the cause of gender equality and has called on the U.S. government to ratify the international treaty for the rights of women (CEDAW). Although more than 90 percent of the U.N. members have signed and ratified it, the United States is the only industrialized country that has not.

Photo: Corbis