Empowering women and girls through education is the best way to fight poverty
We support the congratulatory message sent by the Prime Minister to Malala Yousafzai on her becoming the youngest Nobel laureate, after risking her life to promote education in Pakistan.
The Pakistani female education activist, and Indian child rights activist Kailash Satyarthi are highly deserving joint winners of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.
Bangladesh’s progress in reducing the most extreme forms of poverty, has been helped in no small part by moves to improve basic education and increase women’s participation in the workforce.
We hope the worldwide welcome for the Nobel laureates’ campaigns will inspire more effective grassroots efforts to increase the participation of girls and young women in education in our own country.
Despite huge strides made in the past two decades in bringing about gender parity in enrolments in our primary and lower secondary schools, girls’ education is still held back by high dropout rates particularly in the later secondary years.
Social attitudes which undervalue education by girls still need to be challenged. High drop-out rates have many harmful consequences and are a key factor behind Bangladesh having one of the highest rates of underage marriage in the world.
Education is the most effective way to lift people out of poverty. Policy-makers and the government need to do much more to make girls’ education valued by all.
Empowering women and girls through education is the best way to assure that no-one is deprived of their right to reach their full potential.
Source: Dhaka Tribune
