Thank you, Juniper.
Based on our experience with girls and young women over the past 15 years, we feel that an important recommendation is to create and sustain all girls' programs that develop self-esteem, critical thinking, and leadership skills. At first glance it may seem that these are not very closely linked to economic prosperity, but in fact they're part of a vicious cycle that hampers girls' development and makes it difficult for them to reach their full potential.
There's still a low perceived value of young girls in Canada, where they are perceived as if they can't do much. That, in turn, leads to low self-esteem, self-worth, and self-confidence. This causes depression, distress, and frustrations while growing up. Forty-four per cent of adolescent girls report feeling constantly stressed, and girls are twice as likely as boys to be treated for depression. Sixteen per cent of adolescent girls think of themselves as worthless.
There's a quotation that says, “The most common way for people to give up their power is by thinking they don't have any”, and that's exactly what's happening with girls. They feel powerless, worthless, and they don't have self-esteem to break out of that vicious cycle. We at Girls Action Foundation don't see girls as victims or passive recipients of development. We feel they need to take charge of their own lives. They're agents of change. They just need to be equipped with the skills to allow them to break out of that vicious cycle, to take charge of their lives, to take actions in their own lives that would improve not only their lives, but the lives of the people around them, their families and communities. And that would be the most important step in improving their economic prospects in the long term.
Our second recommendation is providing mentorship and diverse role models for girls growing up. Young Canadian girls don't have that many successful female role models to look up to, especially if they come from minority, indigenous, low-income, northern, rural, or marginalized backgrounds. Studies have proven that if girls are given positive female role models of successful women, their sense of self-worth and self-esteem is higher than girls who don't. We feel this would be an important step in helping girls realize that they can do anything to achieve their full potential, especially for their economic prosperity.
Our third recommendation is educating boys and young men to think critically about gender expectations and to promote equality between the sexes. Now, I think it's quite clear that you can't just reach out to one part of society and expect to have a transformation throughout society. So we don't just reach out to girls and women; we need to reach out to society as a whole, which includes boys and men, who are socialized in the same way as girls. As they grow up, they learn the messages about gender roles, norms, stereotypes, behaviours. They get these messages from a very young age from their families, communities, peers, the media, and from their schools and educational institutions. We need to make sure that our boys and men are educated in a way that they become active protagonists towards gender equality.
Our next recommendation is to review and address gaps in the school curriculum to ensure that gender equality is incorporated at every level of education. This is not just in the content of education, but also in the methodology and the way schools function. Schools need to be welcoming environments for girls, by encouraging them, promoting them, and to be a place where they can thrive and learn and grow to their full potential in all fields, especially in the fields that are currently male-dominated.
Our fifth recommendation is implementing and expanding programs that reduce gender harassment, especially in educational institutions. As Juniper just said, harassment is still very prevalent. Forty-four percent of high school girls report having faced sexual harassment. This has long-term impacts. It causes depression; it causes low self-worth. It can lead to substance abuse, violent delinquency, thoughts of suicide. So it can create a lot of problems. A girl who is faced with this kind of harassment is obviously not going to do her best in her studies and in her professional career, and this is going to limit her economic prospects in the long term. Not only does it cause depression, but it also perpetuates the idea of gender inequality, that women are of a lower status than men, hence they are able to face this discrimination and harassment.
Our final recommendation is providing gender-specific financial literacy education for girls and women. It has been proven in many developing countries that women are better at managing money than men. That's why a lot of social development initiatives—micro-credit initiatives, micro-enterprises, women's empowerment initiatives—all focus on women, and they teach women financial literacy skills, and that helps them take charge of their lives. When a woman is financially empowered, the effect goes on to her family and to the entire community. We feel that girls need to have financial literacy skills so they can plan for their future and improve their economic prospects in the long term.