India

About 40% of girls in India under the age of 14 do not go to school.

credit: Smita Trivedi

For every 100 boys out of school there are 114 girls in the same situation. In the least developed countries, the ratio is 1 to 16. Ensuring that girls have the same educational opportunities as boys is crucial for achieving gender equality and advancing women’s rights.

Women who have gone to school have healthier children, are productive in the home, receive better wages in the workplace, participate more actively in society and are better able to protect themselves and their children, particularly against health problems such as HIV/AIDS.

The impact of educating girls is enormous; check out some of the statistics…

• Over 90 countries failed to reach the 2005 Millennium Development Goal of eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education. This lack of schooling for girls has contributed to over 1 million unnecessary child and maternal deaths in 2006.

• Sources report that 62 million of the children out of school in the world are girls.

• Of the 771 million illiterate adults worldwide, 64% are women.

• Evidence shows that educating women and girls is the most powerful tool against malnutrition.

• On average, a child whose mother has no education is twice as likely to be out of school as a child whose mother has had some education.

Check out our additional resources on Girls Education on the Resource page»