Michelle Obama Calls on World Leaders to Fight Sexism and Promote Education

In a speech in Qatar, the First Lady opened up about her own childhood experiences and how they shaped her.

21 March, 2018
Michelle Obama Calls on World Leaders to Fight Sexism and Promote Education

​Michelle Obama is calling on world leaders to change cultural attitudes that perpetuate gender inequality and create barriers to education for young girls. Obama, who in March launched her global Let Girls Learn initiative, spread her message in a keynote address delivered at the World Innovation Summit for Education in Doha, Qatar on Wednesday. During her speech, the First Lady opened up about her own childhood and how her education freed her from gendered expectations imposed by society.

"Back when I was a girl, even though I was bright and curious and I had plenty of opinions of my own, people were often more interested in hearing what my brother had to say. And my parents didn't have much money; neither of them had a university degree," Obama said. "So when I got to school, I sometimes encountered teachers who assumed that a girl like me wouldn't be a good student. I was even told that I would never be admitted to a prestigious university, so I shouldn't even bother to apply."

"Like so many girls across the globe," she continued, "I got the message that I shouldn't take up too much space in this world. That I should speak softly and rarely. That I should have modest ambitions for my future. That I should do what I was told and not ask too many questions."

The First Lady, of course, ultimately excelled, gaining admission to Princeton and then Harvard Law. She credits her education as the key that "opened up opportunities that I never could have dreamed of as a young black girl from a working-class family in a big American city."

The First Lady's anecdote served as an example of why world leaders need to encourage and support girls in getting an education. While access to education in developing countries is low for both boys and girls, girls also face gender-based barriers like child marriage and threats of physical and sexual violence by the time they hit puberty. Studies have found that when girls have access to education, they have lower rates of infant mortality, are less likely to contract HIV, have higher earning potential, and choose to marry later in life. "When we truly start to value their minds and respect their bodies and give them the education they need to fulfill their potential, that doesn't just transform their lives, it transforms their families and their countries too,"  Obama  said. Educating girls, she argued, is an economic issue.

According to Rebecca Winthrop, ‎director at the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution and co-author of What Works in Girls' Education, educating adolescent girls is the most important economic issue developing countries need to address. Winthrop told Cosmopolitan.com over the phone that the issue has been repeatedly overlooked at major economic conferences like the World Economic Forum in Davos. "Climate change, HIV, AIDS, and global health could be taken up" at Davos, she said, "but for some reason, global education as a topic has been one that has not attracted the global attention and captured global leaders' imaginations until very recently, with a focus on girls and women."

The First Lady is just one of many world leaders who has begun to prioritize global education in recent years, an issue that, as Winthrop points out, has support across the world from leaders like the UK's prime minister David Cameron and Australia's former prime minister Julia Gillard. Crediting Malala Yousafzai and the Nigerian girls who were kidnapped by Boko Haram as the catalysts for international call to action, Winthrop said, "I have been work on girl's education for 15 years and I have never seen the amount of momentum, attention, global advocacy around the topic."

"The First Lady, it's wonderful to have her as an advocate and a champion," Winthrop said, "because she can reach whole groups of people who never would have thought about why girls aren't getting educated worldwide, or why it's so important."

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Credit: Cosmopolitan
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