International Women's Day 2024
Educating women and girls around the world is
a potent countermeasure to climate change.
March 8, is International Women's Day. If you've been on our emailing list or reading our posts over the last several years, you may be thinking, "Oh, I've heard this before." But have you?
After the last few years, this is abundantly clear: Equal, all-access education is crucial for the health of this planet and every person, animal, microbe, tree, molecule on it.
And an important step toward education for all is to specifically support and advocate for girl's and women's education and health.
Project Drawdown has been a leading resource for learning and implementing the solutions needed to "stop catastrophic climate change — as quickly, safely, and equitably as possible." On their list of the most substantive existing solutions, one solution ranks in the top 5 no matter how you crunch the numbers:
Health and Education for Girls and Women
Education lays a foundation for vibrant lives for girls and women, their families, and their communities. It also is one of the most powerful levers available for avoiding emissions by curbing population growth. Women with more years of education have fewer and healthier children, and actively manage their reproductive health.
Educated girls realize higher wages and greater upward mobility, contributing to economic growth. Their rates of maternal mortality drop, as do mortality rates of their babies. They are less likely to marry as children or against their will. They have lower incidence of HIV/AIDS and malaria. Their agricultural plots are more productive and their families better nourished.
Education also shores up resilience and equips girls and women to face the impacts of climate change. They can be more effective stewards of food, soil, trees, and water, even as nature’s cycles change. They have greater capacity to cope with shocks from natural disasters and extreme weather events.
Today, there are economic, cultural, and safety-related barriers that impede 62 million girls around the world from realizing their right to education. Key strategies to change that include:
• make school affordable;
• help girls overcome health barriers;
• reduce the time and distance to get to school; and
• make schools more girl-friendly.
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As the saying goes, knowledge is power.
Now that you have a bit more knowledge, we encourage you to use your power to support the health and education of girls and women, in your local community and our global community. Here are three good options to get you started:
