Why education for girls is not talked about enough?

Inspiring figures like Malala Yousafzai are helping to raise the profile of girls education, and what odds are at stake. For Malala to be wiling to risk her life to get an education shows just how important it is for girls on an individual level, as well as taken as a whole on a global scale, to get an education. But it also demonstrates that educating girls isn't just seen as not a priority by some groups, it is seen as an active threat to a culture or way of life.

Both the Taliban and Boko Haram (the latter's name literally means 'Western education is forbidden/sinful) are both actively opposed to the educating of girls, even to the point of lethal violence. In other countries the hurdles girls have to face are less dangerous but can be almost insurmountable. The expectation that girls, rather than boys, will take a share in taking care or domestic duties in the home, or in caring for elderly relatives, stands in the way of their ability to get away from that environment to attend school.

In many ways educating girls must start with educating the parents of girls, to realise how much value there is to them and their community in their daughters receiving an education. For communities that have never known their daughters to receive an education into adolescence or beyond, this can sometimes be difficult to imagine without clearl role models.