Humanitas Global Development Blog

Boys and Men: A Seat at the Table for Gender Equality

By Savanna Henderson, Humanitas Global

“Not only do women make up half the population of the world - but we also brought the other half into it.” Her Excellency, Dr. Joyce Banda.

Despite this undeniable foothold in the world, girls and women face inequalities in all aspects of life. According to World Bank data, women and girls aged 15 to 44 are more at risk from rape and domestic violence than from cancer, car accidents, malaria, and war. Roughly 5,000 honor killings are carried out against women around the world every year. Female genital mutilation (FGM), a procedure which offers no health benefits to girls and women, is a risk to more than three million girls a year. Globally, one in three women has experienced physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence and up to 38 percent of murders of women are committed by an intimate partner. Every minute 28 girls under the age of 18 are married. In a year, 15 million girls under 18 will be married. When it comes to education, 62 million girls aged six to 15 are not in school and 16 million girls aged six to 11 will never enter school. Finally, 60 percent of the hungry are girls and women.

The driving force behind these inequalities is gender inequality. FGM is performed on women but its ‘benefits’ are strictly awarded to men. Though it varies by region, FGM is commonly practiced to ensure a social convention of acceptable sexual behavior, i.e., premarital virginity and marital fidelity. Girls are married off at young ages because they are undervalued and seen as a burden on the family. Child marriage is also a way to ensure a social convention of acceptable sexual behavior. Girls are kept out of school for a number of reasons including their lesser status with limited resources going towards the boys; social norms that keep girls at home to help with household chores and; child marriage; the threat of gender violence traveling to and from and in school; and inadequate sanitation facilities to support female safety, privacy and menstruation. Social norms may also put girls and women last in line to be fed, with women having little to no say over the family’s food expenditure.

Where do Boys and Men Come In?

While women are often the targets of development interventions, boys and men clearly have a critical role in achieving gender equality. Female empowerment can only go so far when men continue to act on and pass down traditional beliefs and practices rooted in gender inequality to boys. Fortunately, boys and men are being seen and utilized as partners in female empowerment and development around the world. In 2004, the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women adopted conclusions on ‘The role of men and boys in achieving gender equality’. It recognizes the role of men and boys in achieving gender equality and urges governments, UN agencies, donors, the private sector, and civil society to encourage, support and promote male capacity to foster gender equality.

 In line with this message, the Equal Community Foundation, a non-profit in India, works to provide boys and men the opportunity to learn and practice gender equitable behavior. The Action for Equality program works with boys aged 14 to 17 from low income communities. These boys are taught to better understand discrimination and gender inequalities, how to take personal action and later, collective action to influence other boys and men. One assignment includes taking on a household chore typically assigned to a sister.

After a successful program that improved the well-being of married adolescent girls, The Population Council introduced Addis Birhan in Ethiopia for husbands. Informational sessions on detrimental gender norms, relationships, violence and sexual and reproductive health have been taugh to over 130,000 boys and men. As a result, married girls were eight times more likely to report that their husbands helped with domestic duties.

Recently, an Egyptian lawmaker shared that men suffer from “sexual weakness” and to stop FGM, “we will need strong men and we don’t have men of that sort”. While he continues to perpetuate the undervaluing of women through the practice of FGM as “better for women” so they can “stand by their men”, he confirms the role that men have in combatting the abusive practice. Girls and women should not suffer the preemptive consequences of ‘weak men’ and boys and men should not be encouraged to indulge in ‘weaknesses’ at the expense of female health, well-being and rights. Instead, males should be taught to see females as peers with equal rights.  Men Speak Out is a project focused on engaging and empowering men to end FGM and violence against women. The project trains male educators from FGM practicing communities to share information on FGM (many men are unfamiliar with the painful repercussions women experience) and men’s role in accelerating progress towards an end to FGM. When husbands and fathers can stand up to eliminating FGM, they have the power to break the cycle of normalcy and raise sons and daughters that deny inequitable practices.

In West Bengal, Landesa launched the Security for Girls Through Land Project (Girls Project) to improve the social and economic status of girls. In doing so, the Girls Project introduced a curriculum for boys to be implemented in schools, meetings with community members and parents. The curriculum teaches the legal rights of girls including legal age of marriage, laws on equal distribution of inheritance among siblings, and the illegal status of dowries. The Girls Project works towards connecting adolescent girls with land assets to reduce her perceived burden on the family and empower the entire community to see girls and women as equals. At the same time the project acknowledges the necessity to include boys to ensure sustainable behavior changes now and in the future.

As half of the global population with the responsibility of birthing and helping raise the other half, it’s obvious that improving the status of girls and women benefits everyone. Failing to acknowledge the practitioners of discriminatory behavior and future proprietors of inequitable knowledge and practices seriously impairs efforts to improve the status and opportunities for girls and women.  Boys and men deserve a seat at the table; they should be targeted and empowered to disrupt gender inequalities and support the rights of girls and women.

The Role of Cash Transfers in Improving Child Health and Outcomes

By Savanna Henderson, Humanitas Global

Regardless of where a family or caregiver falls on the poverty line, children deserve adequate nutrition, access to healthcare and the opportunity to enroll in and complete school. Yet, children are often unjustly impacted by poverty and disproportionately represented in measurements of poverty. As of 2012 nearly 900 million people were living on US$1.90 a day, the World Bank measure of monetary poverty. UNICEF’s ‘State of the World’s Children 2016’ revealed that children under the age of 17 make up 34 percent of the total population in low- and middle-income countries, they account for 46 percent of the population living in extreme poverty. With such a large vulnerable population, there is dire need to ensure that children are guaranteed their rights and that their caregivers can accommodate them.  

While the pressure to protect and expand access to education has been amplified, children remain underserved and without the opportunity to attend school. Further compounding a child’s right to education though, are the children who attend school at a huge disadvantage granted to them by circumstances wholly outside of their control: 159 million children under five are stunted and 50 million do not weigh enough for their height, indicating a severe lack of energy and proper nutrition. (While children under five are not yet in primary school, stunting is irreversible, which means these children will continue suffering the ills of stunting throughout adulthood. Similarly, undernutrition increases the risk, frequency and severity of infections, carrying its effects throughout childhood) Hungry, and unable to focus, these children may miss out on the benefits of school. In fact, UNICEF found that 38 percent of children leave primary school unable to read, write and do simple arithmetic.

Education has profound impacts on children‘s health, well-being and their future opportunities. For instance, each additional year of education received by a child increases her adult earnings by roughly 10 percent. A study by the Food and Agriculture Organization found that if low-income countries could double access to primary education, food insecurity could be reduced by 25 percent. Girl children who receive an education can even help break the cycle of poverty. Educated girls are less likely to marry young, less likely to die in childbirth, more likely to seek out healthcare and have healthy babies, and are more likely to send their sons and daughters to school.

At the beginning of life, a child born to a mother who received antenatal care and a skilled birth attendant during labor has an increased chance of survival. Unfortunately, poor women often lack access to antenatal care and skilled birth attendants. Child mortality rates among the poorest 20 percent of households have been recorded as double that of those in the richest 20 percent by the World Health Organization. Known as the ‘poverty diseases’, pneumonia accounted for 15 percent of all child deaths under the age of five in 2015 while diarrhea accounted for 9 percent of all deaths. Conditions associated with poverty, poor water and sanitation practices and cooking with solid fuels contribute to the etiology of diarrhea and pneumonia.

One solution to reaching these families and children is through social protection mechanisms.  Social cash transfers can help families manage risks and act as a buffer to shocks such as the death of an income-earning family member or a natural disaster, while supporting investment in children’s health, nutrition and education. The results from a review of social cash transfers in Africa speak for themselves: Not only was there in increase in overall food, there was an increase in the variety of food purchased and consumed. Health among adult and children beneficiaries improved, with less sickness, and increased access in comparison to those not enrolled in the Social Cash Transfer Programme. Absenteeism was reduced, enrollment improved, children stayed in school longer, especially girls, and in one country learning in arithmetic was improved.

In Jordan, cash transfers have allowed Syrian refugee families to pay for fresh foods, school-related expenses, and medicines for children.  In Colombia, Ghana and Pakistan, cash transfers supported and improved transition to higher levels of education, associated with increased adult earnings. Cash transfers in Kenya improved recipients level of food insecurity and enabled families to spend more on healthcare.

With evidence supporting social cash transfer efficacy on improving child health, nutrition and livelihood, it is important to ensure that such programs are efficient, sustainable, and that the impact is equal and representative across all beneficiaries. Every child deserves the opportunity to thrive.

Literacy Disparities Explored: Providing Support for Improved Education

By Nicole Graham, Humanitas Global

In 1965, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) named September 8 the International Literacy Day. This day was created to mobilize the global community around literacy as a means of empowerment. Since then, schools, governments and communities have rallied to increase literacy rates, particularly in the developing world.

Demonstrating a large success for the movement, over 60 percent of all countries reporting data had literacy rates of 95 percent or higher. Despite the global achievement, many countries struggle with low literacy rates.

Literacy rates for youths, according to UNESCO’s latest data, 2012:

 

Literacy rates for adults, according to UNESCO’s latest data, 2012:

As can be seen by the above maps generated by UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics (UIS), Africa lags behind significantly in adult literacy rates. The countries worst off have rates below 40 percent: Benin (34.7 percent), Guinea (29.5 percent), Niger (28.7 percent), Chad (25.70 percent), and Burkina Faso (21.80 percent). The highest literacy rate belongs to Zimbabwe, with 90.7 percent.

In Burkina Faso, child enrollment rates are among the lowest in the world. The state lacks the ability to cover the entire territory with educational infrastructure, and drop-out rates are high. Only one percent of children are enrolled in preschool and 72 percent of Burkina Faso youths age 15 to 24 do not achieve primary education.  

Due to negative or stagnant growth, most sub-Saharan African countries do not possess the resources to improve educational infrastructure. Students struggle to get to school, as 70 percent of Africa remains rural with schools often far away and difficult to reach. A lack of roads and transportation discourage students from making long and sometimes perilous journeys. Furthermore schools struggle to consistently pay teachers, maintain a schoolhouse, and pay for adequate water and sanitation.

Girls are further challenged to obtain an education due to menstruation, household tasks, and aiding with childrearing that prevent them from attending class consistently. Roughly 39 percent of girls in sub-Saharan Africa are married before the age of 18, which often prevents them from attending and finishing school. While a global problem, in Africa, 17 countries either allow marriage below 18 years of age, have gender discriminating minimum age requirements for marriage, or have inconsistencies between minimum age of sexual consent and minimum age of marriage.   

Globally, gender-specific literacy rates demonstrate a divergence, with 87 percent of female youths and 92 percent of male youths exhibiting basic literacy in 2012. For adults (those ages 15 or older), 80 percent of women are literate compared to 89 percent of males.

So why is it that Zimbabwe has such a higher literacy rate than the rest of the continent? According to a recent survey by the Financial Gazette of Zimbabwe called HR Perspectives: Priorities of the Zimbabwean employee, findings indicated that Zimbabweans prioritize school fees above all other related expenses. The Zimbabwean government has prioritized education as the highest priority in its national budget and passed legislation denoting education a right of children regardless of race, gender or religion. Most recently, the Zimbabwe Constitutional Court changed the legal minimum age of marriage to 18 years old. Though equal numbers of boys and girls were attending primary school, the number of girls attending secondary school was half that of the number of boys. The previous Marriage Act, recognizing 16 as the legal minimum age for marriage was identified as a driving factor in reducing a girl’s education.

Improving literacy rates is central to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Providing women with primary education reduces child mortality by one-sixth, and maternal deaths by two-thirds. A cycle of poverty can be disrupted with increased education, effectively reducing communicable disease, hunger and poor nutrition in tandem. Maintaining education as a high priority, identifying challenges to providing and accessing an education, and creating more supportive national policies are key to improving literacy rates and empowering individuals, communities, and nations around the world.