Quality | 2009.11.24
School wasn't for me. But how lucky I was to have a choice | Kathy Lette
While women in the west bruise our heads on the glass ceiling, girls in the world\'s poorest areas face massive inequality
Three-quarters of women regret not making more of their school days, according to a survey published this week. As someone who left the classroom behind at the age of 16, the only examination I\'ve ever passed is my cervical smear test.
Of course, dropping out of education at such a young age means that you have to endure a lot of condescension. Especially in England. When I first came here 20 years ago, having already had three novels published, I landed smack bang in the middle of the literary intelligentsia, many of whom have a condescension chromosome.
It took me a while to realise that they were talking down to me. The upper class intelligentsia don\'t speak English. They speak euphemism. You have to decode them. For example, when they said "Oh you Australians are so refreshing", I thought they really, really liked me. It took me a while to realise that what that meant was: "Rack off you loudmouth colonial nymphomaniac." (I know, I was shocked too. How dare they call me a loudmouth.)
Not having a degree marks you a member of the illiterati. I was staying at a well-known editor\'s place for the weekend once and I was teasing him about how long it took for each of his guests to somehow crowbar the university they attended into the conversation. It was all Cambridge this and Oxford that – not name but university dropping. When I came down for breakfast the next morning, I burst out laughing. Even the marmalade had been to Oxford.
But any nightmare I may have had about being impaled on dreaming spires pales in comparison to the Herculean obstacles that girls face in the developing world as they struggle to get even a basic education. Altogether, more than 43 million of them are currently out of school. Girls are at the back of the queue when it comes to schooling; and as a result they are forced to endure a lifetime of missed opportunities and lost potential.
In some cases the threat of sexual violence on the way to school, or even in the classroom, makes it too dangerous for girls to attend. Or perhaps their families are too poor to send all their children to school, so the boys take priority. Sometimes girls have to help out at home or in the fields. Or they are forced to get married and start having babies as young as 12.
Yes, we women in the west may still be getting concussion from hitting our heads on the glass ceiling and being asked to wipe it clean while we\'re up there – but the inequalities we face are dwarfed by the problems confronted by girls growing up in the poorest parts of the world. It seems to me that any woman who calls herself a postfeminist must have kept her Wonderbra and burnt her brains, as we still have a long way to go.
Earlier this year I visited the town of São Luis in Brazil with the children\'s charity Plan UK , and there I saw for myself some of the work the charity is doing to help girls overcome the incredible odds that keep them locked in the cycle of poverty.
Many young women from the African-Brazilian community – one of the most marginalised groups in the country – are forced into prostitution. Without proper schooling, their options for income are limited, but confidence-building courses and the establishment of a co-operative allow these women to support themselves.
In one of the many slum districts I visited, the level of sexual abuse and exploitation of young girls was truly horrifying. In the face of such extreme suffering, the goal of getting back into the classroom can seem at times a little trivial, but it is a crucial part of rebuilding a normal life. There are towns all over the world like São Luis, where girls are often little more than runners-up in the human race.
And to make matters worse in this era of financial instability, girls are fed last and least. As copulation equals population, an unplanned pregnancy means joining a giant missing persons bureau. And who is missing? The girl with potential – the girl she was BC (Before Childbirth).
This is a vicious cycle, which can be broken only by education, protection and nutrition. For the future of the planet, it\'s imperative that young women be treated as equals. Nearly 90% of us in the United Kingdom believe that education is the key to stamping out gender discrimination in the developing world, with almost three-quarters (71%) saying it is an essential factor to ending poverty – so why aren\'t we all doing more to make sure that this happens?
Those three-quarters of British women may regret not making more of their education, but it is not too late to help millions of the world\'s poorest girls take their rightful place in the classroom.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]ceiling-girls-developing-world
