First, Peng Liyuan, the wife of President Xi Jinping and one of UNESCO’s Special Envoys for the Advancement of Girls’ and Women’s Education, delivered a speech at the Global Education First Initiative event at the United Nations in New York. She included a touching tribute to her father who established a local night school in their small village in China to teach villagers how to read the newspaper and write their names. In her words, “Education is about women and girls. It is important for girls to go to school because they will become their children’s first teachers someday. But women still account for over half of the world’s poor and 60 per cent of adults who cannot read. Education is crucial in addressing such inequalities.” This resonates very strongly with TWF where our Life Skills and T.E.E.N. Programmes for Adolescent Girls and Boys and our Financial Literacy & Employability Programme for Marginalised Women are all about providing women and girls from under-privileged backgrounds with the skills they need to achieve their full potential.

In the same week, speaking to an audience of girls at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, Michelle Obama said, “If I had worried about who liked me and who thought I was cute when I was your age, I wouldn’t be married to the President of the United States." The problem that girls are facing in developed countries and secular states are of course very different to the barriers imposed by poverty and religion. A large part of the issue for teen girls like the ones in Harlem are societal mores that suggest that being smart is not the goal. Just consider the barrage of media images that objectify and hyper sexualise women and girls and the pressure on young girls to be liked on social media. Like Mrs Obama, at TWF we think that often what undercuts girls' ability to focus on school is a culture that wants to make them grow up too quickly.

Two different leading ladies but two very compelling speeches which are well worth watching in full!