Blindness vs. Sight - Looking at Gender Equality in Education

To think of how far we have come, right? I mean, we’ve reached the ostensible pinnacle of Western societal prosperity and tolerance, development and collaboration.

That sounds impressive, doesn’t it?

Thing is, we often get stuck in our own perspectives. After all, we live in a beautiful nation centered on the ideals of freedom and equality…but is that the case everywhere?

Of course not. We just don’t see it.

Problem is, what we do not see is so easy to overlook. We are literal and experiential beings that focus on the tangible and observed from individual perspectives.

That brings me to my point: we must open our own eyes.

Not the outward eye that accompanies us every day, but the inner one, the one that must rely on one’s effort to stay informed and present, to know what is going on all around us. In searching for this, we have found great disparity and inequitable travesty. Gender discrimination in this world is alive and thriving. With 82 million girls between ages 10 and 17 being married off before turning 18 and another 100 million girls involved in child labor, surely our eyes must be somewhat blind. Even now, in this age of “education” and “prosperity,” at least 116 million women between ages 15 and 24 have never completed primary school.

It is to combat this ignorance and evoke change that the E-Girl Power Campaign has been developed. In fighting strenuously, not violently or acrimoniously, but justifiably and through word and action, this campaign seeks to empower and uplift young women of this rapidly developing world. No matter where a woman lives on this planet, she should be able to possess the same fundamental educational rights as her fellow male human being.

The 3D film that e-Girl Power is producing to this end will be a powerful one, one filled not only with the truth, but also with the conviction that we so desperately need in this world to pass on to our future female generation.  It is deserving of our full support and contributive action.

I think we all ought to look at ourselves hard in this process and ask ourselves, “Am I really seeing? Or am I blind?” How can we help to shed light upon those situations that are unsettling simply because they are wrong?

This is one way.