Importance of girl-child education

These benefits include:Lowering infant and child mortality rates.Lowers maternal mortality rates.Protections against HIV/AIDS infection.Increased number of women with jobs and higher earnings .And benefit that last many generations.It is often said that when you educate a girl child you educate a nation. When women are given responsibilities in public offices, they do better than their […]

These benefits include:
Lowering infant and child mortality rates.
Lowers maternal mortality rates.
Protections against HIV/AIDS infection.
Increased number of women with jobs and higher earnings .
And benefit that last many generations.
It is often said that when you educate a girl child you educate a nation. When women are given responsibilities in public offices, they do better than their male counterparts because of their sympathetic nature in  professional sectors such as health and educational sectors.
Education is one of the most critical areas of empowerment for women. Offering girls basic education is one sure way of giving them much greater power of enabling them to make genuine choices over the kinds of lives they wish to live.
The biggest challenge in promoting girl-child participation in education is how to change the societal female perception in a male dominated society. This is possible but may take a long period of time.
The initiatives can only succeed if they are driven from within (community level) with external support by government and members of local and international organizations especially in terms of grinding poverty and hunger, which is probably the most influential in adversely affecting girls participation in education, especially in rural areas.
In such harsh economic circumstances, both direct and hidden costs to a family of sending daughters to school are perceived by parents to be prohibitive in terms of the provision of books, uniforms as well as the loss of vital help at home and on the land. In most cases, the contribution of females is unpaid and they may have little or no experience of the handling of money, which further reduces their status and power, but increases their vulnerability.
Because of the patriarchal predominance, investment in a girl’s schooling is wasteful since it benefits the family into which a girl marries rather than her own in the more privileged classes. Investment in the education of females may be an advantage in ‘marrying well’. In such classes, the more educated the girl is, the more bridal prize Mzee (the old man – the father) attracts. Otherwise, the girl child is at times viewed a ‘commodity’ with certain economic value.
We can achieve giving girls education by persuading the people and parents to educate their children and empower various stakeholders to create a system that will promote and support girls child education by:
1.  Increasing girls enrollment.
2. Reforming schools administration.
3. Improving learning outcome.
4. Supporting parents and community by encouraging them
5. Giving children support by the parents.
6. Showing the children importance of education.
Like the saying goes “If we educate a boy we educate one person, and if we educate a girl we educate the whole nation”.

Turaki  is a level four  student  of Bayero University Kano