Keeping Girls in School Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. FRANKEL. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Minnesota for yielding.

Madam Speaker, I want to start by thanking my very good friend, Susan Brooks. Over the past 7 years together we have been involved in many efforts to advance women and girls. It is an honor to work with the gentlewoman.

I thank my other colleagues for the support to bring this bill to the floor. It is a bipartisan, bicameral bill. It is sponsored by Senators Murkowski and Shaheen in the Senate. It is called the Keeping Girls in School Act.

Madam Speaker, I am going to start with a question:

Why should Americans even care that there are 130 million girls around the world who are kept out of school?

That a young girl in a Malawi village is too frightened to walk miles to a secondary school for fear of sexual assault?

Or that a 12-year-old girl in Mozambique is forced to marry and denied schooling?

Or that hundreds of girls are kidnapped from school by Boko Haram terrorists who believe women should be cooks or sex slaves?

Or care about the 14-year-old in Pakistan, Malala Yousafzai, shot in the head by the Taliban because she wanted girls to be educated?

So why should Americans care that there are 130 million girls around the world who are kept out of school?

Madam Speaker, there are 130 million reasons to care. According to the Malala Fund, the international nonprofit organization that fights for girl's education, cofounded by Malala, girls' education strengthens economies and creates jobs. Millions of girls being educated means there are more working women with the potential to add up to trillions of dollars in global growth.

When girls are educated, communities are more stable and can recover faster from conflict. Extremism grows alongside inequality. When a country gives all its children secondary education they cut their risk of war in half.

Educated girls are healthier citizens who raise healthier families. They are less likely to marry young or to contract HIV, and they are more likely to have healthy, educated children. Each additional year of school a girl completes cuts both infant mortality and child marriage rates.

Madam Speaker, when the Keeping Girls in School Act is put into full force, it will mean that countries where girls are educated will be more peaceful, making violent conflicts less likely and countries more prosperous, allowing them to be more self-reliant and participate in international trade. This means a safer and more economically vibrant world.

The Keeping Girls in School Act recognizes the progress made in closing the gender gap for primary education in developing countries like Vietnam, Tunisia, and Nepal, and recognizes that we must do more to advance our young girls around the world.

This legislation focuses on the unique obstacles keeping adolescent girls from accessing quality education at the secondary level. It will give USAID innovative tools and new funding mechanisms to address and reduce barriers that keep girls out of school--barriers like female genital mutilation, sexual violence, HIV infection, family obligations, and lack of safety.

This legislation would also codify and require updates to the U.S. Global Strategy to Empower Adolescent Girls, bringing together civil society organizations, the private sector, and governments around the world to prepare girls to become the leaders of tomorrow.

I am going to end today, Madam Speaker, by paraphrasing a poem about a young girl's plea to her father in Kenya. It goes something like this: Father says to her: You are grown up, and I am going to marry you off. I say: I don't want a husband. Our fathers say: A daughter is good because we marry her off and we get a crate of beer. Our mothers say: A daughter is good; the bridegroom will surely buy us presents. And I, the daughter, say: Mother, father, give me an education because a husband without an education is nothing. Father, look at other communities that have educated their daughters and reap good fruit. Father says: I will take my beloved sons to school and my beloved daughters will look after the cattle. I say: O, father, let the daughter go to school. Educating a girl is educating a nation. Misery will surely be a thing of the past. And goodness will spread like a good aroma. Let's surely then educate the daughter.

Madam Speaker, when our daughters are educated, the world will change for the better.

I urge support of this very good bill, the Keeping Girls in School Act.

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