What does your future hold? University, your own business, fame and fortune? Whatever your hopes, you will not have imagined a future in which you got married off as a child, were denied an education, or infected with HIV by a husband that’s twice your age. But this is the reality for millions of girls living in extreme poverty. And it’s time to call it out for what it is: Sexist.
Nowhere on earth do girls and women have the same opportunities as men. But for girls living in extreme poverty, sexism can be a death sentence. This is unacceptable.
If we don’t fight for every girl to have the future she deserves, we’re limiting all of humanity’s potential. We need to demand that those with power and resources put women and girls at the heart of their investments.
Here are 25 shocking facts showing why #PovertyisSexist:
Child Marriage
- Globally, girls are being married off at a rate of 33,000 a day.
- Girls from poor families are more than three times more likely to marry before 18 as girls from wealthier families.
- An estimated 650 million women alive today were married as children. That’s double the population of the United States.
Education
- 130 million girls are out of school.
- Half a billion women can’t read.
- Equatorial Guinea, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and Burundi expel pregnant girls from school and deny adolescent mothers the right to study in public schools.
- Attacks on schools increased 17-fold between 2000 and 2014, and girls’ schools were targeted three times more often than boys’ schools.
Female Adolescent HIV and HIV death rates
- Globally, 340,000 girls and young women are infected with HIV every year.
- Girls make up three out of four new infections among children aged 10-19 in sub-Saharan Africa.
- A young woman in sub-Saharan Africa is twice as likely to be infected with HIV than a young man her age.
- Globally, only 3 in every 10 adolescent girls and young women aged 15-24 years have comprehensive and accurate knowledge about HIV. The lack of information on HIV prevention and the power to use this information in sexual relationships, including in the context of marriage, undermines women’s ability to negotiate condom use and engage in safer sex practices.
- In 2017 29,000 girls aged 15-24 died due to AIDS-related illnesses.
Violence Against Women
- Almost one third (30%) of all women who have been in a relationship have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by their intimate partner.
- Globally, 44% of girls aged 15-19 think a husband is entitled to beat his wife.
Domestic labour inequities
- Globally, girls aged 5–14 spend 550 million hours every day on household chores, 160 million more hours than boys their age spend.
- 104 countries around the world have laws stopping women from doing certain jobs.
- In sub-Saharan Africa, women and girls spend roughly 40 billion hours a year collecting water—the equivalent of a year’s worth of labour by the entire workforce in France.
Access to Finance/Financial Inclusion
- Over one billion women do not have access to a bank account.
Maternal Mortality/dying in childbirth
- 99% of all maternal deaths occur in developing countries.
Sexual exploitation of women and girls
- Women and girls make up 96% of those trafficked for sexual exploitation.
Health
- Anaemia, a condition strongly connected to iron deficiency and poor nutrition, afflicts twice as many women as men – nearly one in three women and girls worldwide.
The good news:
- 70% fewer mums could die in childbirth – if all girls had primary education.
- 66% fewer child marriages could happen globally – if all girls had a secondary education.
- US$28 trillion could be generated – if all gender gaps in work and society were closed.
