Women's Lack of Access to Education

[gwsbp-blog]

Reflection

When I started to do my research on my topic, lack of education for women in developing nations, I did not think too much about why it was such a big deal. I knew this area was had some concerns about it but I did not think that it was so serious and how it connected to it. I also knew about Malala Youafzai and how she was leading a group of people. I did not realize that she was leading mostly women so they could get the education they needed. At first, researching articles so I could get more of a feel for the topic was very easy and I finally got the gist of why this topic is very concerning for everyone. However, as the prompts got more specific for the project it was very hard to see what I could use to fulfill that task. 

The reason why I can see this topic so differently now is mostly because of Malala Yousafzai and how her leadership came in handy when her town was taken over by the Taliban. She was very brave to step up and encourage others to learn. Also, when I read all these articles it opened my eyes. I see now the reason why it is important for children to get an education. The younger generation, including myself, are the future of this earth. When our parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents leave us we have to uphold the whole world. It is our job to make the world a better place to the ones who come after us can do the same. When I see how passionate people are about this subject, it makes me want to help out too and I can by volunteering at organizations and donating supplies. 

Overall, this experience of researching why the lack of education for women in developing nations is a problem has been an eye opener and it has definitely changed how I see people who advocate for this. I hope to help this problem when I get older and show others how much of a serious topic it is.

[gwsbp-blog]

Annotated list of additional resources

1) https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/10-barriers-to-education-around-the-world-2/

This source would be a good for those who want more research on this topic because it talks about children as a whole and how both boys and girls need a education. For one reason they do have a reason why girls specifically should get education because for a while several countries do not feel like women deserve or even should get a good education.

2) The situation in developing countries

http://www.bmz.de/en/what_we_do/issues/Education/hintergrund/bildungsituation/

Another source that would help someone who interested in education in developing countries would be this article. This article gives a lot of information and it discusses several topics like how educational goals are not achieved, how much school costs for those people, the poor quality of teachers they have, and the lack of school supplies and teachers. This article gives some solid numbers and should be looked into.

3) Canadian Feed the Children

http://www.canadianfeedthechildren.ca/what/education

I found this website where this organization raises money so they can help children in different countries with education, food, and several other resources. I feel like if anyone who really wants to help them out you could donate and even if you do not have any money you could volunteer. 

4) Women, girls, and Malala: Research on gender and education in Pakistan, and beyond.

http://journalistsresource.org/studies/international/human-rights/pakistan-women-equality-education-economic-development-research-roundup

It think that this is a good source because Malala Yousafzai is a leader for women all over the world ever since she started fighting for us. What makes her so unique is that she was very young when she started this fight and went through so much while experiencing this injustice. If you learn about Malala you will be amazed by how much she has done. 

5) You Won’t Believe How Many Countries Still Won’t Allow Women The Right To Education

http://elitedaily.com/women/separate-unequal-countries-worst-gender-inequality-education/

I felt like I should put this article up so people who are really interested in this topic and see how many countries are still not being fair to women. It is important to know this information so we know how we can help change that. This article was written three years ago so it might have changed for some of these countries. Therefore, you could relate it to how many countries are not giving women education.

[gwsbp-blog]

Your suggested solutions to the problem

There are several strategies that people can use to solve the problem of women not getting education in developing countries but not all of them will work. However, I still think that they should still be tested to see. One strategy I thought of to solve this problem would be for the organizations that have the money and to help those countries by asking what they need. Ask the women how they can help them get back into school, who they can talk to to change this, and several other questions that will help those women go to school. 

Another solution to this problem would be to cut the price of going to school or lowering it because several people live in poverty and cannot afford to go to school. I was also thinking that the organizations that do have this money can help fund the schools when they do cut the tuition for the schools. Therefore, the school will not lose anything from cutting the tuition and the women can go to school without paying any money. 

And to add on to that solution of cutting tuition the students will need nice classrooms, supplies, and a teacher that is trained to teach. Therefore, I think the organizations should also help with those supplies. Also, there are several actors and artists that do go over and help with the same thing. That means that they can help with the funding. One thing that I would like to repeat is that they should ask specifically what they need that would be most beneficial to them.

[gwsbp-blog]

Summary

Discussing how women in developing countries do not get the education they deserve and need is never ending. Because people and countries who have money and want to help them have to understand that they cannot understand force themselves on them and control the people they are helping. They do not know what those women are going through. So instead they should ask the women how they can help. You have to listen to the people you are going to help or else they really won’t get the help they need. 

In my gender women’s studies class, we covered a part about gender wage gaps. It mostly talked about how minorities and women get paid less than the average white male. And it is probably worst for women who are minorities. The article we read gave statistics of how each race got paid. And of course the white women and males got paid way more than the women and men who are minorities. But in all cases the white males were making more money than the women. I related this to my topic because in order for women to get good jobs that pay well they need to get the education which will help them go to college. However there is still that hurdle of no matter what women do, even if they do the same exact work as men they will get paid less. Somehow, we need to fix this together so there can be equality in that area.

[gwsbp-blog]

Description of how the problem is an intersectional issue

For my topic of women not getting the education it definitely has to do with intersections. For example, class definitely has to do with by how people who are in poverty are not able to go to school as much. The tuition is too high for their parents to pay for, so they cannot send their children to school which means that their children are not learning like how a regular child should learn. The higher class and higher middle class will be able to send their children to school because they can pay for their tuition. This shows that not everyone cannot simply get an education because of their class.

[gwsbp-blog]

Discussion of an Institutional Example

Higher education definitely gets affected by this problem. If women do not get their education at an early stage they will not be able to grow. That means they will never be able to reach higher education. For example, in Belize a family does not have enough money to pay for their tow children’s school tuition. And on top of that they cannot afford to buy school supplies on their school uniform. That means they cannot send their children to school which results in their children never even graduating from high school. 

Another institution  that would be affected is the schools that are teaching these children. Basing off of the last example, ifs several families cannot afford the tuition and all the supplies then no one will be sent to school. Therefore, the classrooms with be empty and the schools will have no students.

[gwsbp-blog]

Discussion of a Real Example

In this video, Malala Yousafzai is being interviewed on her view of education especially for women in developing nations. Malala lives in Pakistan and has become a leader specifically for women. She discussed how women who get an education learned how to respect each other, how to work with others, and how to be mindful of several things. In addition, she gave her personal experience and how this affected her. 

From this interview I could definitely tell that she was very passionate about this subject because she experienced education being taken away from her; they stopped her from being able to go to school. The reason why she said they stopped them from going to school was because they realized that if women were to learn and educate themselves about the world, then that would mean that they would become stronger and their husbands would not be able to control them anymore. She also experienced the Taliban being very violent in her town. They blew up several schools and they had to take down the signs on the schools. They blew up the town’s electricity unit and people were dying of thirst. She described how they had to stay inside all day because of the terrorist attacks that were upon their town.

After Malala started encouraging women to continue their education. She was oblivious to the fact that the Taliban had made a threat to her. She did not know about his until a friend told her about this and then she googled her name and saw what was happening. She was not worried about herself at first she was more worried about her father. But as time went on she began to think about “what if they really came to my house and tried to kill me?” At first she thought that she would hit them and do everything to stop them but she realized that if she did do that then she would stoop to their level. So she went on to talk about how she would tell the Taliban what she had to them and then tell them, after her speech to them, to do whatever they wanted. 

[gwsbp-blog]

Analysis of Second Scholarly Source

Another scholarly source that I found was “Constructing new identities? The role of gender and education in rural girls’ life aspirations in Peru.” What this source focused on was mothers and daughters specifically in Peru and to show where education is on the list of priorities for them and how that affects their lifestyle. However, they also noticed some obstacles that got in their way of achieving their goals. For example, women are getting abused at home “Gender violence, for example, is still highly prevalent: in 2009, 39% of women reported physical violence by their male partners.” They also discuss the fact that laws in Peru have changed for the women especially by how more women participated in the National Congress. I agree with mostly what they said in this source. Since I only focused on a particular part that would support my project as a whole.

The only reason why I would disagree with this source would be if they said that women do not need education to survive on their own. Also, I did not read the whole journal because I wanted to focus on specific points that would help my project and when I skimmed the article I noticed that the headers were logical and from what I read, their reasonings made sense.

If I were to ask questions about this a few would be: “Do you think other countries are similar to Peru’s progress for women? Does this happen to majority of the women in Peru or only a few?” My answers to my own questions would be that maybe some other countries may take longer for women’s rights to be in full fledge and in other countries their system may be progressive and liberal. For the second question, I would not know how to answer that because I think that it I would have to research more about this and find data to show me the answer.

Link to Scholarly Source: http://web.a.ebscohost.com.proxy.cc.uic.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=f07e8f45-d9c2-4585-8eca-fd835b7784d7%40sessionmgr4005&vid=7&hid=4209

[gwsbp-blog]

Analysis of Scholarly Source

The scholarly source that I have found that relates to my project is named “A model of women’s educational factors related to delaying girls’ marriages.” This scholarly peer reviewed journal talks about how developing countries need to stop child marriages because it can lead to several problems later on in the young child’s life. For example, they talked about how young brides have a higher risk of getting a disease like HIV, women who are younger than 18 are more likely to die because of their pregnancy, and they also talked about how getting married early means that they would have to drop out of school because they have to take care of their husbands, houses, and children. I agree with this journal. Since this journal is about 23 pages long, the sections I decided to take a look at had convincing claims and logical reasoning and evidence. This whole journal is fighting for women and children to go to school and not to get married at a young age.

Like I said this journal was about 23 pages long so I was not able to read the whole thing but the parts I looked at made me believe that this journal is a good source to look at for help. I agree with everything they put in that peer reviewed journal.

Questions people would have for this would be “What is the reason why there are child marriages? How do you know this source is reliable? Are child marriages going on in places like the United States?” How I would reply to these questions would be that the reason why there are child marriages is because of the poverty in families and even in communities. So in order for their children to have a better life would be to marry them off to a wealthy man. This source is very reliable because I looked it up on my universities library website and it is a peer reviewed journal. For the last question, I would be too sure on how to answer it because I am not focussing on the United States. 

Link to journal:  http://www.smith.edu/psgh/docs/Oct20/Model%20of%20women's%20ed%20factors%20related%20to%20marriage.pdf

[gwsbp-blog]

Analysis of a Web Page

The title of this article is “Education Plays Key Role in Advancing Women, Girls, and Communities, Report says.” What this article talked about was how if we give women a chance in getting the same amount of education that men get then this world will not end in poverty but improve the world as a whole. One quote that was in the article said “If the world is going to end extreme poverty and ensure that prosperity is shared by all, we have to have the full and equal participation of women and men, girls and boys, around the world.” They also give several reasons on why education should be available to women if not these things will happen to them: “far more likely to be married as children, suffer domestic violence, live in poverty, and lack a say over household spending or their own health care than better-educated peers, which harms them, their children, and communities...” I agree that these things will happen to women who do not achieve education because if you are not literate then it will be very hard to communicate with others and one thing will lead to another. Eventually you will either depend on someone or you will be stuck in poverty.

For this article there is nothing I disagree with because they back up all their claims with reliable data. Towards the end of the article they give key facts that they have noticed and immediately after that, they have an agenda that they have set up to help women get the education they deserve. One thing they can improve on is asking the women who are going through this trouble what they need. They need to listen more to the concerns of the women in those areas and then act upon their requests.

Some questions that people might have would be: What are the environments that these women are living in? Where will all their supplies and books for school come from? Are their classrooms and teachers reliable? How I would reply to these questions is that the environments that these women are either not suitable for them to live in or they are suitable for the women because that is how they have grown up. They are used to their lifestyle. For the second question I think the company that is helping them would help supply the supplies and the necessities they need for school. And I am pretty sure the company would do the same for the classrooms and the teachers. However, I think the companies should talk to the people who need this help and see how they feel about the company’s plans.

Link to article: http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2014/05/14/education-key-role-women-girls-communities-report

[gwsbp-blog]

Introduction: Women's lack of access to education in developing nations.

For my Blog Project I decided to pick the topic about how women in developing nations do not get access to education like they should and show others why this is a problem for the world as a whole. 

There are several reasons why this is a problem. For one if women are not in school they are more likely to get married at a younger age which leads to them to depend on their husband. Also, when they do get married earlier than they should, their husbands will not respect their opinions as much and will be treated as objects. Another reason is that they are more likely to live in poverty because they will have not have any jobs to support themselves. Therefore, they are prone to more diseases and will die off sooner than they should. 

The reason why I picked this subject is because women not getting the education they need makes me really mad and disappointed. It is so disappointing that I wanted to make a big deal out of it by posting articles and information on social media. I also chose this topic because it kind of related to my english paper that I am currently writing on Gender Wage Gap and how some people do not think it is a real thing. I felt that women who will not get a good education will not get the jobs that they deserve.