As we celebrate National Women’s Month in August, it is timely to reflect on the progress made toward the education, empowerment and equal opportunities for girls, while looking ahead to overcoming the challenges that remain.
Despite many efforts and visible improvements in the last few decades, in ensuring equal education and other rights for girls, various forms of discrimination against them still persist. In many cultures, girls have a lower status and enjoy fewer rights and opportunities than boys – both in their families and within society. Even in terms of schooling, boys get preference to girls.
Education and empowerment of girls, in the Bahá’í view, is crucial to the well-being of our families, and to the advancement of our communities and nation.
According to the Bahá’í Writings, education should be provided for all. “The cause of universal education … deserves the utmost support that the governments of the world can lend it”, and “No nation can achieve success unless education is accorded all its citizens”, states the Universal House of Justice, the governing council of the Bahá’í international community.
The development and education of every child, their talents, mental and physical abilities and spiritual qualities to their fullest potential, is the right of every child, whether boy or girl. Education of girls is not only a human right. It is also in the best interests of society as a whole. Girls and boys have the same capacities and given the same access and opportunities, they can achieve similar results.
Emphasizing the importance of educating our daughters, the Universal House of Justice states: “The decision-making agencies involved would do well to consider giving first priority to the education of women and girls, since it is through educated mothers that the benefits of knowledge can be most effectively and rapidly diffused throughout society”.
Women will not only render service to humanity as mothers and first educators of the next generation, but they also have a special contributions to make to the creation of peace and a just world order.
While boys and girls, men and women are physically distinct, their spiritual identities are equal. “Women and men,” the Bahá’í Writings state, “have been and will always be equal in the sight of God”. The soul has no gender and the social inequities, which may have been dictated by the survival requirements of the past, cannot be justified at a time when humanity stands at the threshold of maturity.
Our challenge today is how to create the conditions in which girls can develop to their full potential. The creation of such conditions will involve not only deliberate attempts to change various structures of society, but; equally importantly, to bring about the transformation of individuals – men and women, boys and girls.
For feedback please contact: tshwane@bahai.org.za; or call 083 794 0819
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