“What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice, that’s what little girls are made of…” Adults of a certain age would be familiar with this rhyme, which has been attributed to English poet Robert Southey, who died in 1843. However, as the world observed International Day of the Girl Child on Monday, the second such observance in a pandemic, it was with the real recognition that universally girls constitute far more.
This year’s theme, ‘Digital Generation, Our Generation’, gives a nod to girls who are already fully immersed in today’s technology at the level of coding and programming. At the same time, it also speaks to changing or evening out the gender gap with regard to girls’ involvement in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) in general.
Women like Reshma Saujani, who founded Girls Who Code, and its current CEO Dr Tarika Barrett are role models who have put paid to the misconception that a girl needs to be a geek or nerd to get involved in STEM. Established in 2012, Girls Who Code, a non-profit organisation, began with the aim of teaching high school girls in America computing skills like programming, robotics, and web design. It has done far more.
The COVID-19 pandemic saw the organisation shift to online teaching in 2020, which meant that it could immediately reach far more girls. It currently has more than 8,500 programmes worldwide and has served over 450,000 girls and young women to date. The current objective, according to its founder, is to close the gender gap in new entry-level tech jobs by 2030 and it is on track to achieving this.
That is just one organisation. There are many others dedicated to not only boosting girls’ interest in STEM, but their education in general, like Black Girls Code, Girls in Tech, STEM Like a Girl and the Malala Foundation, among others. What they have in common is their drive to change the culture that dismisses girls as not smart and helps them see themselves as not just users of, but the brains behind apps like Instagram, SnapChat and TikTok.
When the United Nations adopted a resolution ten years ago to declare October 11, International Day of the Girl Child, it was in response to the need to address the numerous unique challenges girls face around the world, as well as to increase advocacy for their human rights. The first observance was held a mere two days after an assassination attempt on Pakistani education activist and now Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head while in a bus on her way home from school at the age of 15. A lot has changed since then.
While the necessary levels of universal girls’ education and empowerment had not yet been attained, there had been admirable progress in several parts of the world, despite the pressures brought to bear by war, race and class divisions, cultural traditions, political unrest and natural disasters. However, the COVID-19 pandemic, which we are still grappling with and will continue to for the foreseeable future, has forced a diminishing of the headway made and the effect, yet to be quantified, could prove dire without urgent action by governments to reverse the damage done.
The closure of schools over 18 months ago has truncated girls’ education in many countries, ours included. It is well known that in Guyana, online teaching reached only a minority of students and even they were often affected by power outages, which have been par for the course for decades now. So much so that one wonders if there is an end in sight.
On Sunday last, this newspaper published an interview with 14-year-old Miranda James, who lives at St Ignatius in the Rupununi Savannahs. An avid crafter, who crochets, knits and weaves among other things, Miss James also professed a love for science. Given her dedication, one gets the impression that with the right tools and guidance, this teenager could have a future as one of the country’s Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics mentors. Lamentably, however, she spoke of the challenges she faces with schoolwork, owing to poor internet connection. Nevertheless, she sets an admirable example for her peers.
Girls like Miss James who continue to strive to learn and better themselves despite adversity are the ones who have proven that they have transcended the ‘sugar and spice’. Their brains and determina-tion would never fit nicely into a nursery rhyme, but that’s fine. They don’t need rhymes to become leaders.
