Random thoughts on the education of women

Random thoughts on the education of girls
During the recent chaotic evacuation from Kabul I read an inspiring item about the removal, lock stock and barrel, of the only girls boarding school in Afghanistan, to Ruanda, which set me to thinking, as I often do, about the education of girls and women.
I was born into a family of strong women. My maternal grandmother died at 94, two of her sisters reached their century. My mother and her sister were each in their own way extraordinary women; I have three sisters, all high achievers, and three daughters whose achievements I greatly admire. The thought that girls should not receive the same education as boys is completely alien yet, in many parts of the world, that is the case.
During the current Covid 19 pandemic among the countries least affected are New Zealand, Taiwan, Denmark and Finland, all of them led by women. The countries worst affected include the United States, the United Kingdom, Brazil, India and Iran, all of them led, at the critical stage of the pandemic, either by very macho men or by men who appear not to consider the education of women to be important. From the success of the first group it should be blindingly obvious that the education of women is at least as important as that of men.
One of the most inspirational men I have met is John Wood. When I was at Foyles we hosted the UK launch of his memoir ‘Leaving Microsoft to Change the World’. John had been a highflying executive at Microsoft when, on a trekking holiday in Nepal, he came across a girls school which had no books in its library: somewhat rashly John promised to get them some. He appealed to his network of friends back in the US and very soon his father’s garage was filled with donated books which he shipped out to Nepal. He was so moved by the incident, both by the desperate need for books in third world schools and by the generosity of the donors, that he set up a charity, Room To Read, specifically to help educate girls. Since then the organisation has built or contributed to the building of many thousands of schools and school libraries in lesser developed countries, the great majority of which initially were for girls in East and South Asia where traditionally the education of women has not been a high priority. I believe that John, in his way, has done more to change the world than any of the West’s political leaders.
The young woman who I employed as our house girl when I moved to East Africa more than 50 years ago had left school at 16, after what we in the West would consider only the most basic education. For the past dozen years I have been helping financially with the education of her grandchildren: the oldest, Jane Njeri, is about to enter the best university in Kenya to do a degree in mechanical engineering. I have seldom met a young person more determined to succeed academically and suspect that Jane will contribute more to Kenya than most of her male contemporaries.
It is, sadly, quite easy to pinpoint the main reason for the appalling neglect of girls education: religion. More specifically, the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam with their patriarchal culture and all-powerful and decidedly masculine God. All of them have made significant progress in this field during the past century but all of them still have a long way to go before they can say, with complete honesty, that they treat women as equal to men. The first two are quick to criticise Islam for its attitudes towards women but until we have seen a female Pope and Archbishop there will always be a degree of hypocrisy in such criticism.