Women’s having healthier and
happier life is enough reason for promoting girl child education because with
education, girls have the skills, information and self-confidence that she
needs to be better parents worker and citizen.
Education the girl child makes
them contribute significantly to the development aspirations of the country in
the future.
One statement made by the
United Nations Secretary General, Mr. Ban Ki Moon during his speech at the
first ever international day for the girl child rally moved my heart. He said
….. I quote: Investing in girls is a catalyst for changing the world……” We must
all do our part to let girls be girls and not brides.
Government, parents, guardians
and individual citizen should help fight for this course……because we all have a
role to play in educating the girl child. We should remember the voice of our
own Dr. Aggrey ...”IF YOU EDUCATE A MAN, YOU EDUCATE AN INDIVIDUAL BUT IF YOU
EDUCATE A WOMAN, YOU EDUCATE THE WHOLE NATION.”
On the other hand one major
problem that is confronting this country nowadays is teenage pregnancy. In the
olden days, this problem was mostly non existent due to the prevalence of culture
norms like BRAGORO among the Akans. Such rules forbade premarital sex and any violation
attracted severe punishment like out right banishment.
Teenage pregnancy is pregnancy
in human females under the age of 20. A girl can become pregnant from sexual
intercourse after she has began to ovulate which can be before her first
menstruation period(menarche), but usually occurs after the onset of her periods.
In well-nourished girls, menarche usually takes place at the age of 12 or 13.
In Ghana, females represent
51.2 per cent of the entire population of almost 25 million whereas adolescents
represent 22.4 per cent of the total population. The rate of teenage pregnancy
in Ghana are high; of all births registered in the country in 2018, 30 percent
were by adolescents ,and 14 per cent of adolescents aged between 15 and 19
years had begun childbearing.
Pregnant teenagers face many of
the same obstetrics issues as other women. There are however, additional
medical concerns for pregnant girls aged under 15, who are less likely to have
become physically developed enough to sustain a healthy pregnancy or to give
birth.
Many causes are responsible for
the rise in the rate of this socioeconomic problem. Extreme poverty is one of
the major causes of teenage pregnancy. The economy of this country is in the
woods and as a result of that many industries have collapsed. It is therefore
not surprising there is wide spread and massive unemployment in this country.
Many parents cannot cater for the needs of their children. The teenage girls in this poverty stricken class almost always indulge in sex in order to
make ends meet. Unfortunately a large number of them become pregnant.
Another important cause to
which teenage pregnancy can be attributed is peer pressure. Morally corrupt girls
usually exercise a lot of influence over their friends and mates who are naïve
and gullible. The former usually display the money and personal effects they
obtain from their boy-friends who are sometimes as old as their fathers to then
envy and admiration of the latter. The morally rotten girls therefore have no
difficulty at all in persuading their good friends to abandon their life of chastity and become promiscuous. A lot of the girls are eventually faced with
the problem of teenage pregnancy.
The effects of teenage
pregnancy are frightening, to say the least. Many of the victims go in for
illegal abortions at the hands of quack doctors. The reproductive organs at a
large number of these girls are damaged for the rest of their lives. In other
words, they become barren. They become liabilities. They worsen the unemployment
situation. In order to survive, a lot of them get involved in social vices like
armed robbery, prostitution and drug-trafficking. Biological effects of age
risk of low birth weight, premature labor, anemia and pre-eclampsia.
It is not possible to eliminate
teenage pregnancy from our society, but we must make strenuous efforts to
reduce it to its barest minimum. The government should create adequate jobs for
the masses of the people. The government must work very hard to revive the
ailing economy.
Both parents and teachers must
expose the students to comprehensive or enough sex education and access to
birth control.
In a nut shell I will say these
are some of the reasons why girl child education is important as to teenage
pregnancy:
- Increased
literacy: offering all children education will prop up literacy rates, pushing
forward development in struggling regions.
- Safe
sex:A girl who complete primary school in three times less likely to contract
HIV.With these statistics in mind, The world Bank calls education a “window of
hope’’ in preventing the spread of AIDS among today’s children.
- Poverty
Reduction: When women gets power to education they goes on participate in
business and economic activity which reduce poverty.
-
Smaller
Families: women with secondary education or higher have an average of three children.
Counterparts with on education have an average of seven children
- Thriving
Babies: According to the United Nation Girls’ Education initiative, children of
educated mothers are twice as likely to survive past the age of five.
- Human
Trafficking: Women are most vulnerable to trafficking when they are under-educated and poor, says the United Nations inter-Agency project on human
trafficking.
- Political
Representation: Across the globe, women are under represented as voters and
restricted from political involvement.
- Later
Weddings: As suggested by the United Nations population fund, one in every
three girls is married before reaching the age of 18.In a religion where a girl
receives seven or more years of education, the wedding date is delayed by four
years.
- Income Potential:
According to the United Nation Education, scientific and cultural Organization,
also known as UNESCO, a single year of primary education has shown to increase a
girl’s wages later in life by 20 percent.
- Thriving
GDP: GDP soars or increase when girls also go to school.
I have no doubt in my mind that
if there measure are applied and realized the problem of girl child education
will be improved and teenage pregnancy will be minimized drastically.
CENTER FOR INTEGRATED RURAL AND
CHILD DEVELOPMENT (CIRCDev) is ready to prevent, fight and campaign against
these problems of child labour, child molestation, child trafficking, street children,
teenage pregnancy, child servitude, children on drug, children force into marriage
and child right in the country.
Also promoting formal education
through provision of scholarship for needy but brilliant students, provision of
basic school needs, campaign for Girl-Child education and help school-drops get
back to school/classroom and forming teens club in the various rural school to
mentor, educate and support these children particularly the girl-child.
About the writer:
HAJARA
SALIA is product of the University of Development Studies and the FINANCE
DIRECTOR of CIRCDev. The plight of the rural girl-child is her much concerned. Due to her passion for the development of rural girl-child, Hajara has adopted two rural poor girls to provide them with their basic needs to enhance socioeconomic development.
Contact:
email: hajara.salia@gmail.com
dof@circdev.org
Cell Phone: +233243224737