The State of Our Girls

As we come close to celebrating the International Day of the Girl Child in October, it is important to see what needs more work amidst all the achievements. With the UNESCO citing that 11 million girls around the world will never go back to school, it is important that our governments are prepared.

The immediate needs for the girls in their education are educational materials. However, the reading scores of our primary level students are sub par. What are the ways to help our girls read independently and make sense of the topics in the books? It is unfortunate that our country will be choosing who gets access to quality education and who does not, just like it is doing with the corona virus tests.

Nepal is a country that impedes the growth of girls from the very beginning: it has the law that implies that girls when they grow up, won’t be able to lead independent lives. It’s a country where a woman’s child is legitimized only in the presence of a man, her father or her husband. This law is the major hinderance in advancing the rights and opportunities of young girls. While there has been advances in the property inheritance rights, joint property ownership, etc, large remnants of the culture of prioritizing boys are still there. And the girls who do not have good access to quality education suffer the most.

Back when I was teaching at a public school in Sindhupalchok, I observed a trend. When girls do not feel wanted in their own homes or encouraged in their schools and accepted among their peers, they look for ways to get out of that zone. The regain some sense of choice and belonging by running away from their families to the husband of their choice. However, this control over their life’s decisions post marriage is short-lived and they succumb again to the culture that is augmented by the suppressive laws of this country.

There is also the burden on the guy she marries. Now as a teacher to middle schoolgirls, I saw different types of marriages: to the local mechanic slightly older or to someone of older age marrying for the second time or to someone from a different city or village she met on the internet. Yes, little girls are trying to take control of their lives at the expense of their own education (remember, an education that is not able to give them proper reading abilities). But they are also now taking the burden of having a family with their now life-partners. If they do not have the right circumstances such as a comparatively well off family, proper SRHR awareness, a stable job, they face more vulnerability.

When neither of them are of age and now have to earn, they choose to take the migration route and follow the trend of thousands of Nepalis who labor in the foreign countries for an average income they would never be able to get if they never left. This is how I see the cycle of a lack of quality education focused for girls perpetuating on and on with the additional effect of migration.

One may argue that the predominantly male migration is not the result of early marriages and more to do with the state of our countries’ economy. This might be quite the case, but the way our county is looking at the growth of girls only in terms of access not quality and without looking at the underlying cultural underpinnings, this neglect has been propelling women’s repression and perpetuating poverty.

What are we going to do, now with the pandemic lingering on for a few years? How are we saving our girls’ lives? Is access to resources enough for them? What else they may need? It is definitely not the priority for our current government right now, but at least in the provincial or municipal level, we need to at least try.