It might be tempting to say that girls in Canada are empowered, while girls in developing countries are disempowered, but it wouldn’t be true.

It’s not so black and white: in Canada we are still working towards gender equality, and many developing countries have made a lot of progress towards making sure girls’ rights are respected. No matter how rich or poor a country is, it’s safe to say that almost every country still has a gap between men’s and women’s equality. But how big is Canada’s gap?

The Global Gender Gap report tries to measure the size of the gender gap for every country, every year. Canada gets a good grade – we’re 18th out of 135 countries. But when you look a little closer, you’ll find that there are areas where we’re doing well, and others where there’s still a big gap between men and women.

• Win: When it comes to participating in the workforce, Canada is setting an example. We have reached gender equality in the proportion of men and women who work.
• Fail: In our country’s top job – Prime Minister – we have a low gender equality score. We’ve had one female Prime Minister ever and she was in the position for less than a year.

Let’s look closer at how Canadian girls are doing when it comes to accessing their education, health, economic and political rights.

Education: Measuring the education gap involves looking at how many men compared to women attend primary school, high school, and university or college. This is where Canada is doing the best overall – women have reached or passed equality with men in each aspect of education!

Health and survival: One way to measure the health gender gap is to compare the average number of years women and men can expect to live in good health, taking into account years lost to violence, disease, malnutrition and other health issues. Canada is doing very well in this area – women have a slightly longer healthy life expectancy. Another way to measure is to ask how many female babies are born compared to male babies. In Canada, there are slightly fewer girls born than boys.

Economic: Do men and women participate equally in the workforce? Do they get paid equally? Do they both occupy an equal number of high-level positions? These three questions help to illustrate the economic gap between men and women. Although Canada has an equal number of women at work, women earn 73 percent of what men do for similar work. There are also way fewer women in senior level positions.

Political: The political gap compares men and women in decision-making at the highest levels. Are there an equal number of men and women in high-level government positions, like Ministers or Members of Parliament? How many years have men occupied the Prime Minister’s office, compared to women. It’s in this area that Canada really falls down – less than half of our parliament and ministerial positions are filled by women. And when it comes to the top job (Prime Minister) we barely even got on the scoreboard!

Even though Canada is a “developed” country and girls have equal rights, do we really have gender equality and women’s empowerment? What has to change here to close the gender gap?

Mother-daughter super duo Stacey and Cassi (9) have started a Because I am a Girl Club for moms and daughters in their community. I caught up with Stacey to see what their club is all about!

KJ: What gave you the idea to start a Mother-Daughter Club?

I came up with the idea after being on the Because I am a Girl website and seeing the girls club.  My daughter was too young to start a Girl Club herself and I thought it would not only be educational but a great way to have her get involved with something life altering.  I felt she struggled with many issues of her own, changing body, friendships, emotions and most of all lack of confidence. I told my husband I needed to help her and I thought by developing a youth group we could discuss these issues with some of her peers, but also discuss global girls’ issues as well in hopes that this may get them to focus on issues other than their own for even a short period of time.

Starting this group has really brought an inner passion out of me too and sometimes I spend hours reading on these issues.  I have so many ideas and goals for myself since researching the Because I am a Girl movement that I would have never really thought likely of myself!

KJ: Tell me about how you came up with the name Strong Girlz!

I came up with the name “Strong Girlz” because I wanted the girls to know that we, as a group of females had power and strength, and if we stood together we could make a difference.

KJ: What kind of activities do you do as a club? Are there any upcoming events?

Our group gathers once a month and each meeting has a topic. We have covered “why being a girl matters,” “self-esteem,” “water and sanitation,” and “food and nutrition”. I have used the modules provided by Because I am a Girl and at times just simplified some of the information for their ages.

Part of our responsibilities as “Strong Girlz” is raising money to purchase Gifts of Hope through Plan Canada.  We started with the money jar labels and after one month of collecting we were able to raise enough money to purchase baby chicks, mango tree, and rabbits. The girls were extremely excited to know with just a little effort they were able to change another girl’s life.

On April 29^th, our group walked 2.5km and collected pledges for this event.  We called the walk-a-thon “Walk a mile in her shoes” and were able to raise $302 allowing us to purchase 4 clean water supplies for families in developing countries. Finally before we break for the summer we will be having a huge yard sale in hopes of raising enough money to purchase a clean water supply for a village.

KJ: How are you connecting with girls in other countries?

I usually start each meeting with a few clips from Plan Canada on different girls and their quality of life. Then we discuss how it may be different from our lives, and how can we help. I had “Strong Girlz” shirts made for each girl in the club that allows us to be unique and stand out, all the girls wear them proudly and even to school which also puts our message and cause out there in a different way.

KJ: What tips would you give for someone who is thinking about starting a Mother-Daughter club in their own community?

My tip to other mothers is really to just let the girls lead the conversation in the meetings. I provide the topic and some material but then I let them make comments or ask questions as they come up. I really am just providing them the tools and the guidance; they are making the difference. My advice is to start small but dream big!

Best of luck to all of the moms out there! The more people involved the bigger the voice!

Start a club with the girls in YOUR life! 

We’re celebrating Mother’s Day with a world tour of moms in action. Each of them are role models, doing everything in their power to give their children a bright future. Click on a photo below to start a slideshow!

How is your mother a role model?

There are governments at every level, from neighbourhood to world:

• A city has a municipal government headed by the Mayor.
• A province has a provincial government led by the Premier.
• Canada has a national or federal government led by the Prime Minister.
• The UN is just one example of global government led by the UN Secretary-General

Something that we don’t always think about when we use terms like “the government” is that we are just talking about a collection of people  each elected to represent a different geographical area (like a neighbourhood or region).

Girls and women need to have a voice at every level so that our interests are represented. We have made progress – we have the right to vote in most countries, and there are women in government. But there is a lot of work to be done to make sure we have equal representation.

Did you know…

• Globally, women only represent about 20% of people in national level parliaments.
• The leaders of Germany, Argentina, Liberia, Costa Rica, Kosovo, Malawi and Brazil are all women.
• There has never been a woman in the position of UN Secretary-General, the top job at the United Nations.
• Rwanda is the only country that has more women than men in national government.
• Canada is in the 40th spot on the list of most women in national government. Less than 25% of our federal MPs are women.

It starts with girls

Here at Because I am a Girl, we believe that girls shouldn’t have to wait until they’re adults to have their say in decisions that affect their lives. Giving girls the skills and opportunities to stand up and be heard is what girls’ empowerment is all about.

That’s why Plan and Because I am a Girl help girls get involved in community decision making. Check out last week’s photo post of girls speaking up to make sure their rights are respected!

Now I’ve got a few questions for YOU – tell me what you think in the comments section:

• If there were more women in power, how would things be different?
• What’s stopping women from taking more leadership roles?
• Do you feel like you could be a leader here in Canada?

Almost every week, I interview someone who has decided to join the Because I am a Girl movement. I love how each of them finds their own way to make a difference in THE GIRL ISSUE – they’re definitely role models in my book! Here are just 10 of my favourites:

1. Every year Sara and her daughter, 10-year-old Maddy host a fundraising run for girls – so far they’ve raised over $50,000!
2. Kama is a Canadian teacher who travelled with Because I am a Girl and smartwater to Rwanda to help build a school residence.
3. Sylvie sponsors 10 girls through Plan’s child sponsorship program.
4. Miranda started a Because I am a Girl club at her school – check out our Q&A with her to learn her tips!
5. Minister for the Status of Women Canada, MP Rona Ambrose has made the GIRL ISSUE a priority, helping the Day of the Girl to become official.
6. MuchMusic VJ Sarah Taylor visited Ethiopia to learn and raise awareness about drought and hunger.
7. Felix, a student in Toronto, volunteered at the Plan4Change summit, helped organize a roundtable on the Because I am a Girl report and hosted a Pink LemonAID stand!
8. Sydney is a member of the Because I am a Girl Speaker’s Bureau and she also organized a Slumber-Raiser in support of girls at her school – she shares how she did it in her Q&A!
9. Lizo hits the streets for Because I am a Girl as a canvasser. Have you ever spotted him on a Toronto street corner?
10. Christina is the host of The Girl News from Because I am a Girl – it comes out each month!

Who is your biggest role model and why? Tell us in the comments!

(photo credit: cityyear)

Click on any photo to get the slideshow started:

Find out more about how Plan helps children get their voices heard!

And tell us about a time you spoke up for girls’ rights.

Stella is part of a Plan-supported youth economic empowerment project in a slum in Nairobi, Kenya.

Empowerment sounds like an awesome thing. But sometimes, the meaning of the word “empower” is hard to put your finger on. Today, I’m going to try to break it down for you a bit.

What is empowerment?

When girls are left out of something — whether it’s in decision making, education, health or work — we say that they are “marginalized.”

(Here’s a tip: remembering this term is easy when you think of it as meaning “on the margins”.)

Bringing girls front and centre so that they have a voice and basic human rights is what girls’ empowerment is all about.

Empowerment isn’t something that you can give or take. It starts with making sure girls have the right skills and opportunities, like education and health. With those things, girls can make decisions, participate and claim their rights.

You may have noticed that empowerment has the word “power” in it. Empowerment is about girls finding their power, and using it.

Say it: quotes about empowerment

Power can be taken, but not given. The process of the taking is empowerment in itself. - Gloria Steinem

Empowerment is not giving people power, people already have plenty of power, in the wealth of their knowledge and motivation, to do their jobs magnificently. We define empowerment as letting this power out. - Ken Blanchard

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. - Alice Walker

Two kinds of important empowerment for girls

Political empowerment: Having an equal voice in decision making, whether it’s at home, in your local community or city, or on a national level, is called political empowerment. Learn about three parts of political empowerment for girls and women.

Economic empowerment: Control over money, finances, and assets can make a huge difference for girls. Did you know that “owning property can be a woman’s ticket out of poverty”? But girls and women are often denied the right to own land, businesses and homes. Meet Salamatu who is taking part in Plan’s Youth Economic Empowerment project in Sierra Leone.

Can you think of other kinds of empowerment for girls?

(click on the image to enlarge)

Early childhood development: Even though kids often don’t go to school until after their 5th birthdays, a girls’ first five years are still spent learning and growing. What happens to a girl mentally and physically during her first 5 years will affect her health and education for the rest of her life!

Nutrition: When a girl doesn’t get enough food and nutrients, her body can’t fight off sickness. That’s why good nutrition plays such a big role in preventing diseases that are the most deadly to girls in developing countries, like pneumonia, diarrhea, and measles. Without enough food, girls also find it hard to excel in the classroom.

Access to health care: Girls who get sick in rural areas are often far away from hospitals and larger clinics. To help people in rural areas get access to basic health services, Plan supports “health huts” that help with malaria treatment, maternal and antenatal care, nutritional support and immunization.

Self-esteem & body image: Healthy relationships take practice, and Plan helps girls get a head start by helping both girls and boys learn about love, relationships, sexuality, and HIV/AIDS. Getting girls involved in sports and community leadership are two other ways that Plan helps girls develop self esteem and body image.

Reproductive health: “Below-the-belt health” is about having a safe and satisfying sex life, and freedom to make decisions about our bodies when it comes to having children. There are two ingredients to help girls take control over our own bodies: education and empowerment.

Prevention of malaria & other infectious diseases: Diseases that pass from person to person, or from animals to people, are known as infectious diseases. Measles, malaria, and HIV/AIDS are all examples of infectious disease. These diseases can be deadly when left untreated, and the best way to put a stop to them is to prevent them from spreading. That’s what bed nets and condoms have in common!

Active living: Keeping active keeps girls healthy, and has the added benefits of helping them learn leadership skills and build self-esteem. Plan helps girls get off the sidelines by supporting girls’ soccer teams in countries like Indonesia, Togo, Peru and Ghana. Learn about 5 ways soccer is empowering for girls!

Support for girls with disabilities: In developing countries, poverty and disability are closely related. When a girl is injured or born with a disability, her family may not have the resources to find her the extra support she needs to excel. Stigma against girls with disabilities adds a double whammy. Check out how Plan and Because I am a Girl help support girls with disabilities.

Hygiene & sanitation: The power is in your hands, literally. Did you know that making handwashing a habit could save more lives than any single medical intervention? The best time to wash is before eating, or after using the toilet. Safe sewers, toilets and latrines also help keep us safe from diseases like diarrhea caused by polio and cholera.

Clean water: More than 2.2 million children die every year – that’s four every minute – as a result of diarrhea caused by poor sanitation and hygiene. Hygiene and sanitation can help prevent disease, but so can making sure girls have access to clean water sources. With Plan helping to support and build clean water points, these deadly diseases can be avoided.

Ever feel like you need a dictionary to understand conversations or news about global issues or girls’ rights? Jargon can be a real barrier to talking about complex issues. Even if the words sound familiar, it may be hard to decipher exactly what they mean when it comes to girls’ rights.

To help make sense of it all, I’ve put together this handy international development glossary (with a girl focus of course!)

Basic education: Education provides the building blocks for the rest of a girl’s life. Basic education gives a girl tools like reading, writing, math and social skills that she’ll use throughout the rest of her life. It usually happens at pre-school, primary school, and early high school, but can also be part of an adult education program.

Capacity building: Have you heard the saying, “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime?” Capacity building is about providing knowledge, tools and skills, instead of handouts, so that communities can set and achieve their own goals.

Child protection: This one is simple to understand, but not always simple to do. Child protection is about one thing: keeping children safe from harm.

Development: Meeting the basic human needs of girls and their families and ensuring that their human rights are respected are what the development process is all about.

Humanitarian aid: In emergencies, charities like Plan Canada deliver crisis supplies to meet people’s immediate needs. This is called humanitarian aid. When the situation calms, the focus shifts to recovery projects to meet communities’ long-term needs. Also known as: emergency relief.

Food security: “When all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life.”

Gender disparity: Inequality between people because of their gender – often between men and women – is known as gender disparity.

Globalization: We live in a world where connections between people, countries, cultures, and businesses over long distances are common. Globalization refers to these cross-border relationships.

Life expectancy: The average period that a person may expect to live is what’s known as life expectancy. High rates of early death in a country bring down the average life expectancy of people in that country. Like mortality rates, life expectancies help us compare countries to see how they are doing in meeting their citizen’s basic needs.

Literacy: Being literate means being able to read and write. The literacy rate looks at how many people in a country can read. Illiteracy, or being illiterate, is the opposite of literacy.

Livelihoods: Someone’s livelihood is the way that they can earn a living to secure the necessities of life. Having a job or farming are examples of different livelihoods.

Low and middle income countries: Take the average yearly income of people living in a country in US dollars. Then, see where they fit on the World Bank’s scale: low income, $1,005 or less; lower middle income, $1,006 – $3,975; upper middle income, $3,976 – $12,275; and high income, $12,276 or more. Low and middle income countries are also referred to as developing countries.

Mortality rate: Comparing the number of people who die to the number of people who live gives us a mortality rate. We use child, infant and maternal mortality rates to evaluate how well a country is doing towards meeting the basic needs of its citizens.

Malnutrition: “Malnutrition is the condition that develops when the body does not get the right amount of the vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients it needs to maintain healthy tissues and organ function.” It can happen in people who are both undernourished or over nourished.

Microfinance: Providing loans to low income clients is known as microfinance. Even though the amounts are usually small, microfinance can allow small businesses to get up and running. Micro-loans are often targeted towards women and can help them break the cycle of poverty.

Millennium Development Goals: In 2000, the UN created 8 goals to change the world by the year 2015. These goals are to: end poverty and hunger, achieve universal education, gender equality and environmental sustainability, provide child and maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, and have countries work together to meet these targets.

NGO: NGO stands for non-governmental organization. They get that name because they are organizations that are independent from the government. NGOs are sometimes referred to as charities or non-profits.

Primary health care: Just like basic education, primary health care is about the essentials when it comes to health. It’s about making sure that health care basics, like vaccines, medicine, and skilled care are available and affordable to every single person that needs them.

Sanitation: Sanitation refers to the tools and systems for preventing humans from coming into contact with wastes, whether they are from humans, animals, farms or industry.

Standard of living: Standard of living is another way to compare the quality of life between people from different countries and communities by measuring things like: wealth, employment, possessions, and happiness.

Need more definitions? CanadianGeographic.ca has a great international development glossary!

(photo credit: tuppus)

Today is World Malaria Day, and that’s what Mosquito Masher is all about. But it’s not just a game! If you earn enough points by mashing mosquitos, a mosquito repellent bed net will be donated to stop the spread of malaria in Africa by protecting families from mosquito bites while they sleep.

With a fly swatter in hand, earn points, collect power-ups, and learn some interesting information about malaria and malaria prevention. For every player that earns 10,000 points, a real bed net will be donated by Plan Canada and Spread the Net!

5 Malaria Facts:

• Half the world’s population – about 3.3 billion people – are at risk of contracting malaria.
• Globally, there are 250 million malaria cases and nearly one million deaths each year.
• 90% of global malaria cases are in Africa where the disease affects children and families.
• Malaria kills more African children than any other disease, resulting in one death every 45 seconds.
• Malaria contributes to the death of 10,000 pregnant women and 20,000 babies in Africa every year.

Head over to PlanCanada.ca to start mashing, and help us reach our goal of donating 10,000 nets!