February 2018 will mark the 100th anniversary of the Representation of the People Act 1918 (which allowed some women over the age of 30 to vote for the first time) with December 2018 marking 100 years since the first general election in which women voted in the UK. 2018 will celebrate this key step in the process towards female emancipation and universal suffrage with a full year of events across the country.
New Zealand was the first country to allow women to vote in 1893. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia granted women the right to vote only in 2011.
But in many countries around the world girls are still fighting for their rights to receive the same education as boys. According to UNESCO estimates, 130 million girls between the age of 6 and 17 are out of school and 15 million girls of primary-school age—half of them in sub-Saharan Africa— will never enter a classroom
And so, although they might be allowed to vote, if they can’t even go to school to learn about the world, what is the point?
Few have it in them to fight for the right of girls to be equal to boys as hard as Malala Yousefvai. She was almost killed by the Taliban, a group of men who forbid girls in areas of Pakistan from going to school and certainly from voting. She survived the attack and now campaigns for girls’ education around the world. The youngest ever Young Nobel Peace Prize winner is now an inspiration for men and women across the world and she is only 20.
On 16th January 2018, it was announced that The Big Heart Foundation (TBHF) in cooperation with the Malala Fund has donated the equivalent of £505,715 to build a school for girls in Pakistan.The school is being constructed in the Swat Valley, Malala’s home district, and will open its doors to 350 girls in its 11 classrooms once completed in April. Gradually, the school will expand to accommodate 1,000 girl students of all grades.
Who knows, one of them might become president one day?
By – Lara (and Patricia)