By Karla Cloete
Edited by Tasmiyah Randeree & Imaan Moosa
Past pandemics contain powerful lessons about the risks that outbreaks pose to girls' education. Here’s what it means for us today.
Sometimes I deeply miss the time in my life when I had never heard of Zoom or Microsoft Teams, I didn’t keep hand sanitiser in all my bags and I had no idea what my average body temperature was.
Once upon a time, my Google search history didn’t consist of things like “mask-cne tips”, “social distance birthday ideas” or “how to support someone who’s grieving”.
This year I celebrated my second graduation with a YouTube live ceremony. After a year of sitting alone in my room teaching myself an honours degree, watching pre-recorded lectures at double speed and handing in an endless string of assignments to professors who have never met me, it was kind of anticlimactic… to say the least.
According to UNESCO, the Covid-19 pandemic interrupted the education of 3 million students across 194 countries.
In between online lectures (or sometimes during, if I’m not watching TikTok), I consider how much has been taken from a single generation: how many students fell through the gaping cracks in our education systems, what fundamental lessons will children fail to learn until it's too late and the lost career opportunities young adults will have to spend the latter half of their twenties trying to catch up on?
Last year I wrote an article for Network24’s Die Student on the impact the Covid-19 pandemic would have on tertiary education in South Africa. Malala Yousafzia also has an excellent TED interview on the topic if you have an hour to spare. But this only scratches the surface.
Learning from past pandemics
When we consider the impact Covid-19 might have on education, speculation isn’t necessary as we have previous pandemics and economic crises we can draw from.
During 2014-2015, the Ebola pandemic ravaged large parts of West Africa, with the greatest damage wreaked in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.
This crisis and the aftermath of the financial meltdown of 2008 led to many girls not being sent back to school, with registrations remaining low in the following years. Almost 5 millions girls lost access to their education during the Ebola outbreak.
UNESCO has estimated that 11 million girls won’t be returning to school, with 12-17 year old’s at the highest risk in low and lower-income countries in the coming years post-Covid.
The Malala Fund’s recent report used the Ebola pandemic to calculate the magnitude of our current dilemma. They estimated that 20 million girls may not return to school and that these long-term effects will disproportionately hurt marginalized communities.
Global pandemics have a way of making us all re-prioritize, but girls' education rarely makes the list when nations are battling an outbreak.
Why is girls’ and women’s education uniquely at risk?
Pre-pandemic gender gaps
Many countries already had disproportionate gender gaps in their education systems prior to the pandemic: The average schooling for girls in Guinea was 0.9 years and 2.7 for boys. Sierra Leone had 1.8 years for girls against four years for boys. This is problematic because a pre-existing gender gap means that any loss of time in school now will have a far greater impact on girls in the future. When girls only have a handful of years in school, a year-long pandemic means they lose almost half of their education.
It is also clear from past data that post-pandemic levels of school registration for girls rarely bounced back to previous levels. In countries like India, where the race towards gender equality has been glacial, it means any progress has practically stalled.
According to Forbes India, Covid-19 has undone 70 years of progress in girls' education. This is incredibly damaging when the country was only beginning to bridge the gender gap and increase women’s literacy levels.
Education Funding and Poverty
Poverty has been one of the largest barriers to girls receiving an education. The sheer cost of schooling alone often results in families choosing to invest in their son’s education while requiring girls to take responsibility for household chores, help with childcare or generate an income. The cyclical and damaging effects of poverty on girls and women only worsen when the economic impacts of a pandemic hit the poorest families first.
After Liberia’s Ebola outbreak, many girls did not return to school as they became the primary breadwinners for their families.
On a macro-level, these economic impacts trickle down from governments into local schools in poor communities. In most countries touched by Ebola, funding for education was quickly reallocated to healthcare sectors.
Now the Education Funding Watch’s 2021 report shows that already two-thirds of governments have made cuts to funding for education. This means initiatives like school feedings schemes, grants and basic salaries of educators may not be available to those who need them the most, which leaves already impoverished families at a loss of accessing education for their children.
Very few South African schools can afford these kinds of budget cuts, especially schools that already lack basic necessities such as books and infrastructure.
Bodily harm
This pandemic has made South Africans and nations worldwide cognizant of the scourge of gender-based violence (GBVF).
For girls living in rural communities who have to travel to and from school, this threat is a daily reality. Their families may refuse to send them to school to protect them from violence and sexual harassment, they may be forced to drop out or endure the recurring threat of GBVF to receive an education at all costs, hoping to break free from the poverty in which they grew up in.
During school closures, a girl’s body and life are also at risk as they are more likely to be exposed to GBVF, child marriages, unwanted pregnancies and illegal abortions at home or in their communities. This may also affect the likelihood of returning to school as laid out by Girls, not Brides, an organization that combats child marriages, which drastically increases during pandemics due to the financial strains many families suffer.
These pre-existing and pandemic specific dangers were made startlingly clear during the Ebola outbreak where rates of GBVF, sexual assault and exploitation skyrocketed. Unfortunately, we saw this pattern repeating itself in our own country during the lockdown and resulted in girls being unable to access or complete their education.
What now? Why the present moment matters
When girls' education is not considered a priority the lives of girls and their communities are endangered.
According to UNESCO, a single additional year of education can increase a girl’s future earnings by 20%. By ensuring girls receive even a primary school education, unwanted teen pregnancies drop by 10%. Not only that, but on a much larger level, some countries annually lose $1 billion because girls are not educated to the same level as boys.
When girls and women are afforded equal access to education, they have the potential to lift themselves and their communities out of a cycle of poverty and empower future generations to be independent, thereby bettering society as a whole.
Education is a powerful weapon that combats both ignorance and injustice. Girls should not be sent into the world unarmed.
This is why it is vital that we look at mistakes made in the past and prevent the post-Ebola pattern from occurring in schools today.
The Global Partnership for Education advises that when students begin enrolling again, governments should monitor and track enrolment with consideration for a gender difference and implement incentives for women's education. School’s should also get their fair share of the pie and be a priority in governmental budgets.
Hope alone is enough. We need to act. After all, there are far worse things than a YouTube graduation.
Sources and additional reading:
Activism, changemakers and hope for the future. 2020. [video] Directed by M. Yousafzai and W. Rodgers. https://www.ted.com/talks/malala_yousafzai_activism_changemakers_and_hope_for_the_future
: TED.
Cloete, K., 2020. Doen die kinders 'n guns en stuur hulle skool toe. [online] Netwerk24.
Available at: https://www.netwerk24.com/Stemme/Die-Student/doen-die-kinders-n-guns-en-stuur-hulle-skool-toe-20200821
Accessed 1 June 2021
Ehlers, S., 2020. Invest in girls’ education for a better post-COVID-19 world. [online] Globalpartnership.org.
Available at: https://www.globalpartnership.org/blog/invest-girls-education-better-post-covid-19-world
Forbes India. 2020. Covid Classrooms: India Could Lose Progress Made On Girls' Education | Forbes India Blog. [online]
Available at: https://www.forbesindia.com/blog/gender-parity/covid-classrooms-india-could-lose-progress-made-on-girls-education/
Accessed 1 June 2021
Malala Fund | Newsroom. 2020. Malala Fund releases report on girls’ education and COVID-19 | Malala Fund Newsroom. [online]
Available at: https://malala.org/newsroom/archive/malala-fund-releases-report-girls-education-covid-19
Accessed 1 June 2021
Reliefweb.int. 2021. [online]
Witter, A., 2021.
How COVID-19 is threatening girls’ education? [online] ONE.
UNESCO. 2021. Girls’ education and COVID-19: New factsheet shows increased inequalities for the education of adolescent girls. [online]
Available at: https://en.unesco.org/news/girls-education-and-covid-19-new-factsheet-shows-increased-inequalities-education-adolescent
Accessed 1 June 2021
UNESCO. 2021. Keeping girls in the picture. [online]
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