The world’s future hinges on supporting ten-year-old girls

1. Ten-year-old Daline enjoys reading, dancing and using her mother’s make up. And she loves school. Her favourite subject is chemistry. “When I was at primary school, my favourite subject was history,” she says. “But now that I am at secondary school, my new favourite subject is chemistry because it is easy to understand, because chemicals are easy to make and because I love science.”
2. Daline, who will be eleven next month, lives with her parents and two younger brothers in Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé. She does some housework – “I wash plates, clean the floor and the yard, and sometimes I cook food” – but so does her brother, who “helps me to sweep the floor”. She definitely prefers going to school to staying at home. But the support received by Daline – and the 65 million other ten-year-old girls around the world – over the next few years will have a huge influence not only on her life but also on the future of her country and the global economy.
3. According to the UN Population Fund’s State of the World Population 2016 report, the future of ten-year-old girls will shape all our futures. Getting girls through secondary school could earn billions of dollars a year for poorer countries, the report says. But girls face many hurdles before they reach adulthood. Worldwide, twice as many girls as boys will never start school. Girls are also more likely to be married young than boys.
4. The report found that 10% of five- to 14-year-old girls do more than 28 hours of household chores a week, twice that of boys. The authors said that more than half of the world’s ten-year-old girls live in the 48 countries with the worst gender inequality records. Each year of education brings an additional 11.7% increase in wages in later life for girls (compared with 9.6% for men), added the report, which calculated that if all the ten-year-old girls in poorer countries completed secondary education, $21bn a year would be earned. In some countries, individual earnings could increase by half by 2030.
5. Governments and NGOs must make investments in girls an urgent priority, said the report’s authors, who also criticized social systems that make women stay at home and called for a commitment to “increasing the presence, visibility and activity of women and girls in school and work”.
6. The study said the life direction of a ten-year-old girl would be the ultimate test of the success or failure of the 17 development goals, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2015. The goals promise to eliminate extreme poverty, get all children through primary and secondary school, end all discrimination against all girls and women, and eliminate harmful practices.
7. “These ten-year-olds represent both a challenge and an opportunity for the global community and will have a significant role to play in what the future represents,” said the authors. “The ability of institutions, both local and global, to help to prepare ten-year-olds for their transition through adolescence to adulthood, particularly by safeguarding their emotional development, health and rights, will decide how much this generation is able to maximize its potential and become drivers of positive change at the local and global levels.”
8. “What the world will look like in 15 years will depend on our doing everything in our power to realize the potential of a ten-year-old girl today. Whenever a girl’s potential goes unrealized, we all lose,” said the UNFPA’s executive director, Babatunde Osotimehin. “How we invest in and support ten-year-old girls today will decide what our world will look like in 2030. With support from family, community and nation, and the full realization of her rights, a ten-year-old girl can thrive and help bring about the future we all want.”
9. Daline has just started secondary school. She has yet to decide what job she wants to do when she’s older but she is certain of the world in which she wants to live. “I want to work in a society where I may help children who are abandoned or maltreated or homeless so that they will no longer be alone.”