MP backs call to improve women and girls education

Jim Dobbin MP

Jim Dobbin MP for Heywood and Middleton is backing a call to improve education for women and girls across the Commonwealth.

The call comes from leading Commonwealth and women’s charities at a conference held in the House of Commons to mark Commonwealth Day. The Commonwealth focus for the year has been on women as agents of change, and the conference focussed in educational inequalities in the Commonwealth.

The call to action which will be put to Commonwealth governments in lobbying during the run-up to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth, Australia this autumn sets out a six-point package of measures to improve women and girls education.

Governments are called on to: 

• Close the gender gap in access to education that leaves 121 million children, most of them girls, out of school and 500 million women unable to read or write – twice as many as men.
• Provide women with equal access to complete secondary education.
• Ensure all sectors of education have trained teaching and support staff.
• Support pastoral policies that prevent girls and women from dropping out of education.
• Ensure education programmes reject cultural stereotyping of women to provide equal access in all subjects, including science and sport.
• Introduce employment legislation to ensure women’s economic rewards reflect their academic achievements and abilities. 

The conference that endorsed the “call to action” was organised jointly by the Council for Education in the Commonwealth, Soroptimist International, the Commonwealth Secretariat, London South Bank University, with backing from UNESCO UK Commission, the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, and the Royal Commonwealth Society.

Speakers included The Honourable Mrs Kamla Persad-Bissessar MP, Chair of the Commonwealth and Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Rt Hon Harriet Harman MP, shadow International Development Secretary who is recognised as a leading campaigner on women’s rights and Ms Marie Staunton, chief executive of Plan International UK, which today published a report on the position of women in Commonwealth countries.

Jim DobbinMP said: “Access to education is vital for the progress of our world and education for girls and women ensures that their children will be better educated. It is time that the gender gap inequalities in education are eradicated.”