The Christian Science Monitor Weekly - April 16, 2018

VILUPPURAM, INDIA

G

irl power is blooming

across India. Clubs in-

tended to boost adoles-

cent girls’ sense of worth

are sprouting in remote

villages. Women feeling

empowered in local pol-

itics are acting as mentors and making a

priority of improving the future for one of

India’s most long-neglected populations.

But there’s girl power, and then there’s

Thennamadevi.

In Thennamadevi, a village sheltered by

banana trees and nestled amid rice paddies

and sugar cane fields in India’s southern

Tamil Nadu state, girls have moved beyond

discussions of the challenges they face in

India. They’re taking action. Bold action.

Frustrated by the many do-nothing

men who seemed more interested in turn-

ing sugar cane into moonshine than in im-

proving village life, the teenage girls have

organized around their professed goal of

making Thennamadevi the best community

in their district.

The result is that in less than two years

the girls have done everything from creating

a 150-book library to successfully lobbying

local authorities for a bus stop. The objective

there: to cut down on the time girls (and

boys) have to spend walking through dark

and sometimes dangerous fields to get to

and from school.

“After going to our club, I know my rights

as a child and as a girl, but it seems what’s

different about our village is that we didn’t

stop there,” says Kousalya Radakrishnan,

the Thennamadevi girls club president. “We

now understand our role in our community,

and we are acting on that.”

Young Kousalya, even though still in high

school, already sounds like a seasoned pol-

itician. She sums up her role in the local

girls’ movement with clarity and simplicity:

to figure out how to deliver on the hopes and

dreams that bubble up from the two dozen

14- to 18-year-olds in the club.

All of which has also helped make her

into a minor celebrity and role model here.

As she steps out of a cramped community

center and onto a dirt street to lead one of

the club’s signature rallies, dramatically

standing out in a sea-green dress, she is

swarmed by young girls with pigtails and

wide grins. “We’re making things better not

just for girls,” she says, “but for everybody

in our village.”

And maybe, she might have said, for the

world’s largest democracy.

Around the world, development experts are

increasingly focusing on girls as the key to

fostering progress in developing countries.

For more than two decades, aid groups and

international nongovernmental organiza-

tions have centered their efforts on trying

to reduce poverty and improve global health

for women. The rationale has been that by

unlocking a rural woman’s entrepreneurial

spirit – helping her, for example, to not just

tend her field but to sell her own produce

• the woman’s entire family will receive a
  boost. Similarly, improving maternal health
  and helping a woman space out her preg-
  nancies will enhance prosperity.
  Numerous African and South Asian
  countries have seen extreme poverty rates
  fall and national health standards improve
  as a result of a focus on women. But more
  recently development experts have honed
  their efforts even further, zeroing in on girls
  as the linchpin of sustained economic and

social progress in developing countries.

“We know that if girls stay in school,

if they don’t marry and have babies ear-

ly, and if they are empowered to pursue

dreams their mothers never could have

imagined, they improve not just their own

lives but are a force for growth and prog-

ress in their communities and more broadly

in their countries,” says Geeta Rao Gup-

ta, a senior fellow at the United Nations

Foundation and an international expert in

women’s empowerment. “When girls learn

to replace time-honored limitations with ‘I

can be whatever I want to be,’ it opens new

paths forward for the girls and for everyone

around them.”

In many developing countries, girls face

two starkly divergent paths: one fettered

by gender inequality and cut short by early

childbearing and the other offering personal

fulfillment and economic improvement that

benefit families and nations. If the second

path is closed off, experts say, that’s a large

chunk of a country’s economic growth po-

tential that will never be tapped.

“Countries cannot end poverty if girls are

unable to make a safe and healthy transition

from adolescence to adulthood and become

productive members of their communities

and nations,” the United Nations Popula-

tion Fund (UNFPA) said in its 2016 “State

of World Population” report.

The UNFPA report focused on the

world’s 60 million 10-year-old girls, noting

that the educational and other opportuni-

ties available to pre-adolescent girls and the

“flurry of life-changing events” on their hori-

zon will go a long way in determining many

developing countries’ prospects.

“We’ve seen that intervening with girls

around 10 years old makes a great deal of

sense, because they still have many options

before them and they aren’t yet facing the

pressures that come in many cultures with

adolescence,” says Dr. Gupta. “Reversing a

girl’s trajectory after 13 is often very diffi-

cult, especially if she’s had little education

and she’s married early and will soon be

expected to have babies.”

Pointing out that worldwide 32 million

girls of primary-school age are not in school,

the report noted that “without quality edu-

cation the 10-year-old girl will not acquire

skills to earn a better income and find de-

cent work.” The ability of countries to en-

sure access to a primary and secondary edu-

VCONTINUES ON PAGE 28

‘When girls

learn to replace

time-honored

limitations with

“I can be

whatever I want to

be,” it opens new

paths forward....’

• Geeta Rao Gupta,
  United Nations Foundation

CAROLYN KASTER/AP/FILE

BY HOWARD LAFRANCHI / STAFF WRITER