Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, April 24, 1995                   TAG: 9504260019
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

HOW ABOUT TAKING THEM TO SCHOOL?

American parents worry, with reason, that their daughters may have limited career opportunities, not only because others might underestimate their potential or undervalue their work, but because girls themselves might narrow their options for lack of role models in more typically male fields. So, some moms and dads take the girls out of school one day to show them the work world and expand their horizons.

In many developing countries, the problem is more likely to be that the girls aren't in school in the first place. They are at work every day, but not in jobs that will improve or give them control over their lives. They are gathering wood, toting water long distances to their homes, cleaning, washing clothes, milking cows, cooking, caring for younger brothers and sisters and working alongside their mothers in fields. All day, every day.

Worldwide, more than two-thirds of the children who either get no schooling or drop out early are girls. Some 76 million fewer girls than boys are enrolled in primary or secondary schools and, not surprisingly, two-thirds of the world's illiterate are women. Girls join the unpaid work force early and, lacking an education, stay there.

The United States spends $250 million annually on foreign aid to help educate girls in Third World countries. When budget deficits are huge and more than enough young women in our own country are dropping out of school to have babies they can't support, it is tempting to cut this aid and spend the millions at home - or not at all.

That would be a mistake. Overpopulated countries with vast numbers of uneducated people affect the economies of developed nations and the ecology of the world. A better-educated populace opens export markets, nurtures democracy, furthers sustainable development and improves people's health.

Consider: InterAction, an association of U.S. private voluntary organizations that advocates international humanitarian efforts, cites studies that suggest one-fourth to one-half of agricultural labor-productivity differences among nations can be attributed to differences in education levels. Now consider: Women in rural Africa produce, process and store up to 80 percent of the food consumed. Yet fewer than 10 percent of agricultural extension programs are geared to women.

Worldwide indifference to women's contributions as well as their needs is intolerable - not because institutionalized condescension about "women's work" is demeaning, which it is, but because the world can't afford the luxury of maintaining such ignorance.

For every additional year of schooling a woman receives, InterAction says, her fertility rate drops 5 to 10 percent, her chance of losing an infant drops 10 percent, and her wages rise 10 to 20 percent. Take Our Daughters to Work Day is a nice idea in America. In most of the world, too many women are taking their daughters to work every day.