Best-selling author backs girls’ campaign (21/9/09)

Queen of the quip, novelist Kathy Lette is penning her most epic project yet – calling for more school places for girls in the world’s poorest countries.
 
The author of ten best sellers, including How To Kill Your husband – And Other Handy Household Hints, Mad Cows and her latest, To Love Honour and Betray has joined international NGO Plan International’s Because I am a Girl mission to boost girls’ rights and end discrimination.
 
A report launched today (21) as part of the campaign reveals that failing to send girls to school is costing the world’s poorest countries billions of pounds a year.
 
“In the developing world, girls are often little more than runners-up in the human race,” says Kathy.
 
As a result of the current financial crisis, an extra 50,000 African babies will die before their first birthday this year. Most of these will be girls, reveals the report.
 
“In this era of financial instability, when the only bank we can count on is the sperm bank, girls are fed last and least,” says Kathy.
 
“As copulation equals population, an unplanned pregnancy means joining a giant missing person’s bureau. And who is missing - the girl with potential – the girl she was B.C – before childbirth.”
 
So shocked is Kathy by the report’s findings, she held a star-studded dinner party at her North London home to discuss the issue with her celeb pals.
 
Guests included Sky newsreader Kay Burley, actress Maureen Lipman and Sinead Cusack, human rights activist Shami Chakrabarti and wife of the Prime Minister Sarah Brown.
 
No education means girls are confined to dangerous, unskilled work - neglecting their earning potential and slowing a country’s recovery from the current financial crisis.
 
The global economic downturn also means girls in the developing world are the first to lose their jobs, may end up in the sex trade and are more likely to die young.
 
“It’s a vicious cycle – a menstrual cycle, which can only be broken by education, protection and nutrition,” says Kathy.
 
Millions of girls never receive secondary level education across the world because culturally boys are considered more worthy and better earners.
 
That means half the population in the poorest regions of the planet are ignored as an untapped resource.
 
Just a one per cent rise in the number of girls attending secondary school boosts a country’s annual per capita income growth by 0.3 per cent.
 
The findings published in Plan’s Because I am a Girl report 2009 include:

• millions of young women  lose their jobs
• money sent home from  migrants falls  
• more girls get involved  in child labour  
• girls leave education to  become domestic maids  
  

“Female-led microfinance projects have the power to break another cycle too, the cycle of poverty,” says Kathy.
 
“Girl Power could kick start these ailing economies. The international community must act now to save every girl who is illiterate, impoverished, ignored and ill-treated.
 
“For the future of the planet, it’s imperative that young women be treated as equals, instead of sequels.”
 
Plan is now calling for a global 10-point action plan which includes providing girls with education, better jobs, access to land or property and leadership opportunities.
 
A recent study revealed that £2 billion could be added to the economy of Kenya alone if the country educated its girls to secondary school level.
 
In times of economic hardship, girls in the world’s poorest countries are the first to be pulled out of school as families cannot afford books, uniforms and other costs.
 
The report finds that this consigns them to a life of domestic servitude – so continuing a cycle of poverty as they become less likely to send their own children to school.
 
“It’s bad enough that if you’re a young woman in Britain the recession could cost you your job, but in some countries it could cost you your life,” says Plan UK chief executive Marie Staunton.