Expanding access to quality education and mentorship are pivotal yet underutilized strategies for empowering women and girls globally. This chapter examines persistent barriers like poverty, cultural norms, and lack of female teachers inhibiting girls' education access. It highlights interventions including cash transfers, infrastructure improvements, and vocational training that have successfully boosted girls' school participation. However, gender disparities in secondary and higher education remain pervasive, limiting women's opportunities and leadership. The chapter also explores how curricula typically reinforce gender stereotypes rather than building agency,, and advocates approaches promoting skills like entrepreneurship. It emphasizes the benefits of mentors providing guidance, networking, and inspiration as women navigate career challenges, such as the shortage of female role models across sectors. Formal programs, virtual mentoring, and cross-national initiatives expand access amid mentor scarcity.
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Across cultures and continents, education and mentorship serve as two integral yet oft-overlooked keys to unlocking women’s empowerment. From the schoolhouses of rural villages to the boardrooms of multinational corporations, expanding access to impactful learning opportunities and strong role models provides women and girls the tools and guidance to reach their fullest potential as leaders. However, despite global progress towards gender equity over recent decades, women worldwide continue facing steep barriers to education access from a young age. Compounding these obstacles, women remain starkly underrepresented in leadership roles across sectors, depriving aspiring female professionals of mentorship from those who have come before them. Bridging these gaps in education and mentorship is imperative for elevating women into positions of influence and authority.
The far-reaching benefits of educating girls have become increasingly clear. Studies show that educating girls leads to increased economic productivity, improved child and maternal health, and higher wages that lift households out of poverty (Psacharopoulos & Patrinos, 2018). Education also empowers girls to make decisions about their own lives and futures, fostering independence and self-efficacy (Sanders, 2017). However, entrenched gender roles and norms in many societies continue restricting girls’ access. Poverty is a major driver, causing families to favor educating sons who will inherit the household over daughters who will one day marry out (Hill & King, 1995). Other barriers include child marriage and early pregnancy, gender-based violence at or on the way to school, lack of sanitation facilities, and long travel distances without safe transport (Mlama et al., 2019). Cultural attitudes devaluing girls’ education also persist in certain contexts (Kumar & Sahoo, 2024).
While global enrollment in primary education has improved to near-parity between girls and boys, disparities widen at higher levels. Across sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia, girls’ secondary school participation lags nearly 10 percentage points behind boys (UNESCO, 2016). Tertiary education gaps are even more severe, with global female enrollment at universities just 1.5 women for every 2 men (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2022). Even when girls are formally enrolled, quality issues from lack of female teachers to curricula reinforcing traditional gender roles inhibit the empowering potential of education (Jayaweera, 1997). Tailoring learning opportunities to equip girls with leadership, critical thinking, and vocational skills is essential to set more women on paths to achievement (Lloyd et al., 2016).
Equally important is providing girls and women at all career stages access to knowledgeable mentors who can provide guidance, support, and inspiration. Studies consistently demonstrate that mentorship accelerates women’s professional advancement, conferring benefits like increased confidence, improved skills, and greater career fulfillment (Allen et al., 2004). Mentors provide insider information about advancing in particular fields, assist with networking, give candid feedback on performance, and serve as living examples that success is achievable (Ehrich, 1995). They help women navigate cultural norms, gender bias, and other specific obstacles faced (Darwin & Palmer, 2009).