International Day of the Girl is celebrated each year on October 11. The UN dedicated this day to:
“highlight and address the needs and challenges girls face, while promoting girls’ empowerment and the fulfilment of their human rights.”
It’s crucial that we empower girls worldwide and make it clear that we support them in the face of poverty, discrimination and violent or sexual threats. We need to celebrate the potential of girls from all cultures and relay the message that any girl can thrive, regardless of their background.
Girls’ rights are human rights and it’s up to us as privileged society to illuminate this fact.
“If one man can destroy everything, why can’t one girl change it?”
- Malala Yousafzai
Each year’s International Day of the Girl has its own theme. Today we are celebrating: “With Her: A Skilled Girl Force”. We are shining a light on girls everywhere as they inspire and take charge of their own future through innovation, automation and technology.
600 million girls are about to join the workforce. The world of work as we know it has been transformed and it’s critical that girl learn skills that open them up to a opportunities and life long careers. We need to properly train and equip our girls in order for them to prosper in this automation revolution.
“In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders.”
- COO of Sheryl Sandberg.
However, marginalized girls around the world face multiple barriers to these opportunities. They are continually discriminated against because of biasness, lack of information and poor education. A quarter of young people, most of them girls, are unemployed or have no access to education and training.
Organisations need to intervene and encourage initiatives that aid the education of girls. Endorsed Employer for Women, Schneider Electric, understand this and have taken action. Schneider Electric are challenging the stereotypes and biases that prevail within the male dominated engineering and technology sectors by running school outreach programmes to encourage girls into STEM. Schneider Electric now have over 100 STEM ambassadors.
Girls are unstoppable. When empowered to lead and given the right tools, they will create technology to solve global challenges, rise to the top of FTSE 500 companies and invest in the generation that comes after them.