Getting girls out of work and into school

Quality education for girls is a prerequisite for stopping girl child labour

Published by: UNESCO Bangkok: Asia and Pacific Regional Bureau for Education , 2006
Via: Eldis

In the Asia-Pacific region, girls’ labour, official and unofficial, continues to constitute a major obstacle to accelerating progress towards achieving gender parity and equality in primary and secondary education by 2015.

This policy brief summarises the causes and consequences of girls’ child labour on their educational opportunities and describes some of the instruments and strategies in place to reduce girls’ labour. It also provides insights into current good practice, assisting policy-makers and practitioners to better understand and address the issues for getting girls out of work and into school.

The brief describes three innovative initiatives to get girls out of work and into school in China, India and the Philippines. These initiatives incorporate methods such as training girls to be peer educators; direct assistance to cover education costs; incorporating life skills and sex education; creating participatory "girl-friendly" environments and outreach education for communities; community mobilisation against bonded labour; training local girl-child activists to educate communities.