Education x Period Poverty
Education is widely known to be life-changing for those in poverty. In fact, it’s one of the most powerful tools for social mobility there is: UNESCO found that if all adults had a secondary education, 420 million people could be lifted out of poverty. The benefits of an education, however, are especially astonishing when considering the cases of young women in low-income regions. The issues arising from a lack of education, including teenage pregnancy and child marriage, play some of the largest roles in holding young women back and preventing them from rising out of poverty. If all women in sub-Saharan Africa and Southwest Asia had a secondary education, nearly 60% fewer girls would become pregnant under the age of 17, and there would be 66% fewer child marriages. This cycle cannot be broken until one girl is able to complete her education. Educating young girls can quite literally change the trajectory of entire communities. And yet, in spite of the clear benefits of educating young women--particularly in impoverished countries--the percentage of women who’ve never been to school is astonishingly high. According to the World Inequality Database on Education, Somalia, Niger, and Liberia—some of the poorest countries in the world—have alarmingly high rates of girls aged 7-16 who have never even been to school: 95%, 78%, and 77%, respectively.
While there are a multitude of reasons young girls in developing nations are denied an education, menstruation clearly plays a strong role. Over 30% of girls report missing school due to their periods in Nepal and Afghanistan. In India, the statistics are arguably worse, with 23% of girls dropping out of school completely when reaching puberty in order to tend to the bleeding. Girls are forced to put a stop to their education simply because they do not have the appropriate feminine products. Free access to menstrual products would directly assist in taking care of excessive bleeding and preventing soiled clothing, both of which contribute to young girls skipping school in developing countries.