Chapter 4b - Increasing the Quality of Adolescent Girls' Education: A Vital Development and Reproductive Health Measure

The significant returns from female education to families, children, and women themselves, are well known. Women and girls with education are more likely to delay marriage, childbearing, and ultimately, give birth to fewer children. Female education is associated with increased nutritional status of children, improved health and survivorship, and increased education of children. Educated women enjoy increased economic productivity, including agricultural outputs and earnings, resulting in overall economic benefits to the family (Summers 1994; Odaga and Heneveld 1995). This is to say nothing of the probable psycho-social benefits to women resulting from exposure to the larger world—a world outside the confines of the immediate family and the domestic sphere. In many countries, particularly developing countries, girls are at a disadvantage in terms of schooling compared to boys. Girls' disadvantage is reflected in rates of school The disadvantages that girls face compared to boys in educational enrollment, attainment, and achievement has been a long-standing concern, particularly in developing countries. Much of the policy attention to adolescent girls' schooling experience has been associated in the public mind with a presumed relationship between early sexual activity, teen pregnancy, and withdrawal from school. A recent ministerial-level conference in the East and Southern African region devoted to this subject was entitled " Counting the Cost: