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| Authors: | Barbara Herz Gene B. Sperling, Senior Fellow for Economic Policy and Director of the Center for Universal Education |
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| Publisher: | Council on Foreign Relations Press |
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Release Date: April 2004
103 pages
ISBN 0-87609-344-6
$10.00
Investing in girls’ education globally delivers huge returns for economic growth, political participation, women’s health, smaller and more sustainable families, and disease prevention, concludes a new report from the Council’s Center for Universal Education by Senior Fellow Gene Sperling, former national economic adviser in the Clinton administration, and Barbara Herz, who brings more than twenty years of expertise at the U.S. Agency for International Development, U.S. Treasury, and the World Bank.
To effectively support and expand programs that increase girls’ educational opportunities, countries need to develop comprehensive national education strategies and ensure that heads of state and ministers prioritize education, which in turn can mobilize sufficient resources to get the job done. The report summarizes the extensive body of research on the state of girls' education in the developing world today; the impact of educating girls on families, economies, and nations; and the most promising approaches to increasing girls' enrollment and educational quality. The overall conclusions are straightforward: educating girls pays off substantially. While challenges still remain, existing research provides us quidance on how to make significant progress.
Barbara Herz, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, has worked on and
written about girls' education for more than twenty years. In the 1970s she headed the
U.S. Agency for International Development division responsible for policy in education,
health, and population. She was a member of the U.S. delegation to the
UN Conference for Women in Copenhagen in 1980. She then worked from
1981-1999 at the World Bank, where she launched the Women in Development
division and then headed another division covering education, health, and population
in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. She was a member of the World
Bank Delegation to the UN Conference for Women in Nairobi in 1986. She later
served as senior adviser for social sectors to Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers
and is now an economic consultant living in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. She holds
a BA from Wellesley and a PhD from Yale.
Gene B. Sperling is the director of the Center for Universal Education at the
Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Sperling previously served as national economic
adviser to President Clinton from 1996-2000, and represented the Clinton administration at the 2000 UN World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal, where he
delivered one of the keynote addresses. Mr. Sperling is a member of the UN Millennium
Task Force on Gender Equality and Education, and served on the Education
Expert Group of the World Economic Forum's Global Governance Initiative. Mr. Sperling also serves as U.S. chair of the Global Campaign for Education. He graduated from Yale Law School and holds a BA from the University of Minnesota.
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