It’s time we include girls

We are the experts on catcalling, slut shaming, and rape culture. We are the ones who experience girl on girl hate and blatant disrespect simply on the basis of being female. We are told that we do not belong in STEM fields, that we should get off the football field and play a “safer” sport, that our skirts should be longer and our heels shorter. We are girls, we are proud, and it’s time we are included.

For centuries, girls have been overlooked, whether it be in outcome documents, the media, or simply in conversations. To give you an idea of just how much of a problem this is: There are 62 million girls currently not enrolled in school. This means each of those girls is at a higher risk of becoming a child bride, which means that there is a large chance they will die in childbirth (girls under 15 are 5 times more likely to die in childbirth than women in their twenties). Even if uneducated girls aren’t married off, they are still stuck in the cycle of poverty, clinging desperately to any piece of light they can find in the dark place that is their world. Uneducated, impoverished girls become uneducated, impoverished women, which means that yet another generation is lost.

While the problem of girls being denied an education, getting married off before they turn 18, and continuing the cycle of poverty may sound like a far away problem to many in the more developed parts of the world, it’s time to face the fact that girls’ voices have been silenced for too long on every corner of the Earth. We have to start at the beginning of the problem, and focus our efforts in the fight against this messed up world where it begins: the lack of inclusion of girls.

Girls are the experts on girls’ rights. It’s that simple. The first time I felt less than because of my gender was when I was nine years old. I was walking around in a tank top, because it was August, and all day, I felt grown men staring at my hardly-developed chest. Since that day, I have been painfully aware of what it feels like to have adult males constantly looking me up and down. That said, my voice—or any other girl’s—has hardly been heard when the topic of catcalling and street harassment is brought to the table. Why is this? Is it because we’re girls and seen as “too young” to have any knowledge on the topic of gender based discrimination? The answer is yes. The silencing of girls is an epidemic. The good news, however, is that it’s an epidemic with an easy fix: let’s include them.

Create easily accessible forums all over the world, and allow girls to speak freely about the discrimination they face every day. Do not quiet girls; instead, let them scream at the top of their lungs from the rooftop of every building that they are important, and worthy of respect. Include them in outcome documents, and give girls more than half a page. We must stop teaching girls that they are less than.

By including girls, economies will improve, illiteracy rates will go down, and we will advance in leaps and bounds towards equality for all. Girls have been waiting to speak for years, and it’s time that we as a society listen.

Header image credit: Library and Archives Canada/Flickr