While doing some research lately for a personal project of mine, I came across some shocking statistics that I felt I just had to share on the GWL Blog. While looking around for a base reference on female literacy rates in developing countries, I found a 2015 UN global report that had studied gender equality and discovered a harrowing truth: nearly two-thirds of the world’s illiterate adults are women, a proportion that has remained obstinately unaltered for the past 20 years, despite seemingly encouraging steps towards progress.
This means that, of the 781 million illiterate adults across the world, 496 million are women. Furthermore, the research also suggested an even more pointed injustice – that females make up more than half the illiterate population in all regions of the world, from richest to poorest.
As has been made very clear across developing countries, educating young girls has been at the core of much developmental thinking, effort and programming for some time now, but it would seem to me that illiteracy among adolescent girls, and particularly adult women, from outside the protection of formal education implementation is an increasingly critical issue that risks becoming an issue that slips through administrative fingers and is thus forgotten.
As a woman whose bread, butter and inherent happiness depends on her ability to read, write and adequately communicate, I can’t imagine what it must be like to have such a fundamental human right denied. Indeed, the benefits of literacy on women and the people around them have been well-noted and promoted for decades now. In a message given six years ago to mark International Literacy Day, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon used his allotted time to emphasise the transformative effect on both a family and the wider community when a woman is literate. He stated: “Literate women are more likely to send their children, especially their girls, to school. By acquiring literacy, women become more economically self-reliant and more actively engaged in their country’s social, political and cultural life. All evidence shows that investment in literacy for women yields high development dividends. Every literate woman marks a victory over poverty,” Furthermore, he called for “increasing funding and sustained advocacy for quality literacy programmes that empower women and ensure that girls and boys at primary and secondary level do not become a new generation of young illiterates.”
The figures from the statistics I found also detailed that:
- educated women tend to begin their families at a later age and have fewer, healthier children.
- a 1% rise in women’s literacy is 3 times more likely to reduce deaths in children than a 1% rise in the number of doctors. (Based upon a United Nations study of 46 countries.)
- for women, 4 to 6 years of education led to a 20% drop in infant deaths
- women with more education generally have better personal health and nutrition.
- the families of women with some education tend to have better housing, clothing, income water, and sanitation.
Despite Ban Ki-moon’s words, it’s obvious to me that greater investment in women’s adult and youth literacy globally is still urgently needed, while responsibility must be accepted across all sectors, not just within education services and providers. A sense of integrated women’s rights that goes beyond simply meeting targets or placating global government bodies must be instilled in future generations and leaders in order to fully utilise the power of the female mind both socially and economically. It’s clear that hundreds of millions of women and their future daughters and granddaughters are dependent on it.
Of course, we here at the GWL are fully aware that literacy is not just an issue for developing countries and that there are many women here in Scotland that would also like a helping hand with their education. Bearing that in mind, if you or anyone you know would like to brush up on any reading, writing or numeracy skills – or even just gain confidence in areas such as CV writing or diary jotting! – then we warmly invite you to contact us so that we can support you in this, either as part of a group, or one-on-one, whichever you find most comfortable.
If you’re interested in joining one of these help sessions, please contact Donna Moore either by email at donna.moore@womenslibrary.org.uk, or by calling 0141 550 2267.
Also, if you’d like to read more on the topic of women’s literacy, feel free to check out some of our books on the topic, such as:
Women and Literacy by Marcela Ballara (1992)
The First Step Towards Equality: Topic on Women’s Education by Su Xiaohuan (1995)
African American Females: Addressing the Challenges And Nurturing the Future by Eboni M. Zamani-Gallaher (2013)
Bluestockings: The Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for An Education by Jane Robinson (2009)
Comments are closed.