Women make up half of the global population. But statistically women, along with the children they care for, make up the vast majority of the desperately poor, illiterate, malnourished and powerless. In recent year’s many international scholars have begun to draw parallels between the status of women and some of the toughest global problems such as hunger, illiteracy, poverty, disease and population.
Micro lending, pioneered by Mohammad Yunus with the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, shows that simple ideas, like lending small sums of money to women, can have major impacts on women and their society far beyond economics. These women have a chance to improve their lives, which translates as better nutrition, decision-making power in their families and increased standing in their communities. Perhaps the most significant result is in the children of Grameen borrowers, with nearly 100 percent of them now getting an education.
In the past 50 years, overall, women have made great strides in improving their lives in many areas of the world, but this success has been uneven and in some places very slow. Education is one area where many successes have been seen. In 1970, 47 percent of the population in the developing world was illiterate. In 1998, that number had fallen to 26 percent. However, because the global population had swelled during this period, the number of illiterate had actually grown by 41 million.
About two-thirds of the world’s one billion illiterate people are women. The link between literacy and population growth has been known for some time, and statistics show that where women’s literacy is high, fertility rates tend to be low. For example, in Guatemala, women with no education have an average of 7.1 children and women with a secondary or better education have 2.7 children on average. The average number of years a woman in Guatemala spends in school is 3.1.
However, local conditions have a major impact on the education-childbearing link in individual country settings, and the Guatemala experience has not been replicated everywhere. According to the Population Reference Bureau, "At present, no scientific consensus exists about the exact processes by which education affects childbearing…theories abound regarding the different mechanisms involved."
Literacy may not be the single deciding factor in whether women have more children, but it is usually an indicator of how much women are valued in a particular society. Increasing educational opportunities for women and girls in just one important element to ensure women have healthier lives, which translates to healthier families.
