When this article was published, a lot of chatter was going around in the Peace Corps world. In summary, many people thought (Peace Corps Volunteers or otherwise) that Let Girls Learn, as a program, was going to be discontinued. Michelle Obama started Let Girls Learn (LGL) which facilitates educational opportunities for adolescent girls in developing countries. Peace Corps partnered with Let Girls Learn and Georgia is one of the participating countries. At this point, it seems that the program will change its name only and the funds available can still be used to champion for girls’ education.
I strongly believe that Let Girls Learn is needed because it helps improve the self-esteem of many young females. Georgia is not an easy country to grow up as a girl. Girls are less valued than boys and the statistics show that this starts before birth. If fact, sex-selective abortions rates in Georgia are one of the highest in the world. In other words, Georgia is one of the countries where pregnant women choose or are encouraged to get an abortion simply because the baby would be a girl.
Many of us have heard about this practice in China and in India, but people do not typically think of Europe when they hear sex-selective abortion. In Georgia, the average number of boys to girls born between 2005-2009 was 110 boys to 100 girls. Based on how natural selection works, the numbers suggest that for every 100 boys born, there are 4.2 girls missing in Georgia during that time period (Source: eurasianet).
In September 2016, I attended a World Vision training on this very topic. The instructor pointed out how this typically looks like in families. When the wife gets pregnant with the first child, she typically keeps the child regardless of gender. If it is a girl, then they hope that the second pregnancy will be a boy. If the first born is a boy, then they feel secure in society and all is good. Things get complicated when the first and second pregnancy are both females.
If both the first and second pregnancy are girls, then a women might feel inclined to have a sex-selective abortion. The “missing middle child” is an indicator that sex-selective abortion may have occurred. Typically, Georgians have two children. More so, the common practice is to have the two children about two years apart. Therefore, if a family has a daughter as the first born child and a four-year gap between the first child and the second, it is an indicator of a sex-selective abortion. Most likely, the mother got pregnant two years after the first child and found out it was a girl. Since the family only wants two children and they desperately want a son, they abort the almost-second-to-be daughter. This is the most common pattern among families who have chosen to have a sex-selective abortion.
Yesterday, Justin and I attended a first grader’s birthday party. The first grader happened to be a sweet 7-year-old girl. I noticed that her little sister playing in the background with a balloon. I asked Justin how old he thinks the little one is and he said, “2 or 3 years old.” So doing the math, there is a four-year age gap between the first born daughter and the second born daughter. I immediately thought of the demographics of sex-selective abortion I learned in training. No joke, ten seconds later, a toast was being made by the uncle to the parents of the birthday girl. Want to take a guess of what he said? In loose translation from Georgian, “I hope one day God will bless you with a son!” Here we are celebrating the birth of this sweet little girl, but a toast is made to the unborn son.
The mother turns and looks at me and explains that in Georgia it is important to have a son and it is a sign of strength for the family. I smiled painfully and thought to myself, “this is utter BS!” I can confidently say here on the internet that this infuriates me because I grew up in a culture that favors boys over girls as well. In my family, I only have sisters. Growing up, I remember countless of men and women tell my parents, “so when are you having a boy?” My favorite was when my youngest sister was born. Minutes after she was born, the congratulations were followed by, “hopefully God will bless you with a boy the next one around.” So I completely understand why Georgian parents feel this immense pressure to produce a son. My family went through the same thing.
In fact, as a running joke, when people ask my father how many children he has, he answers, “2 girls and a girl.” He doesn’t say “3 girls” because my youngest sister was supposed to our hope for a brother/son. Thus, if she were born as a boy, the answer would have been, “2 girls and a boy.” To keep that sentence formula the same, my dad jokes, “2 girls and a girl.” It is a preemptive comic relief to avoid people to say, “where is your son?” As a young child, I picked up on this. I remember thinking that my family must not be complete if I do not have a brother.
Thankfully, my parents are loving and supporting, so they never made me or my sisters feel that way. So wanting a brother was only surface deep. Luckily, my parents never made my sisters and I feel like we weren’t good enough. The difference in my culture and the Georgian is that in my culture, the norm is to keep having babies or giving up. In Georgia, the practice is to have those pre-selective abortions. In fact, abortions are a common form of birth-control.
When there is a culture that favors males over females, it shouldn’t be a surprise that girls and women are not encouraged to be as active in society as boys and men. Thus, this is why Let Girls Learn is needed here. I’m not saying that LGL is the solution to the sex-selective abortions; it is not. I’m just saying that LGL allows girls to feel valued and encouraged to do more. When little girls hear at their birthday parties toasts to their unborn brother, they might not feel as important. Girls might not feel as entitled to have their own freedom or create their own independent path in life.
Therefore, I am passionate about creating a difference here and helping other volunteers to do the same. During my service here, I am a member of the Gender Equality Committee here in Peace Corps. It is an official programmatic committee, which means it supports the US Government’s strategy to promote gender equality, integration, and empowerment. Our committee specifically aims to increase awareness of gender issues and encourage gender egalitarianism in Georgia by being a primary conduit of gender-related resources for Peace Corps Volunteers and by promoting and supporting gender-based projects such as campus, trainings, informational fairs, and special activities.
We have supported various projects and activities. We have also created informational resources for the community or specifically for Peace Corps Volunteers. In March 2017, we did a special edition newsletter for Women’s History month. The newsletter highlighted local “Gender Heroes.” Each Gender Hero talked about how they promote gender equality in their own special way. If you would like to read it, click on the link: GenEqSpecialEditionMarch. If you would like to check-out our Facebook page, click here.
