“I roll with clever broads,” starts the first line of Rwandan-Canadian rapper Shad‘s latest single Keep Shining. Like in so many kinds of pop-culture, women in hip hop are often portrayed in unrealistic ways – either mysoginistically or as superwomen – what makes a guy decide to write a girl power song? Today, Shad weighs [...]

Sticking with our theme of boys and men who have taken on The Girl Issue, today’s male supporter is Rick Miller, an award-winning theatre actor, voice actor comedian and playwright, as well as dad to two daughters. Rick created All About Eve, a presentation that compares and contrasts a girl in Canada and a girl in [...]

Rathika Sitsabaiesan is 29 years old, born in Sri Lanka, and the first female Member of Parliament (MP) ever to be elected in the Scarborough-Rouge River riding in Ontario. Today, she gives us the inside scoop on how writing a letter to your MP about an issue you care about – like girls’ rights – can make [...]

Here at Because I am a Girl, girls’ rights are a big deal. But what exactly do we mean when we talk about rights and what are girls’ rights specifically? Use this glossary to help wrap your head around what we mean when we talk about girls’ rights. Right A right is something to which a [...]

Does your mom make you clean up your room, take out the garbage and mow the lawn? Would your mom ever ask you to skip school or homework to get these tasks done? To us, it sounds ludicrous – of course school comes first! But, for many girls in the developing world, household chores are [...]

Check the labels in your t-shirt drawer. Chances are, more than a few were made in Bangladesh. Bangladesh is a small country next to India with a huge garment industry, where many girls and women work to produce clothes for brands that we buy on a daily basis. The Bad: Factory work can be exploitative, [...]

Literacy is basically a big word for the ability to read and write. Literacy can also refer to the ability to count and do math or use computers. Reading, writing and counting are things that we do in our everyday lives to fulfil our basic needs. We use math to do our grocery shopping, we [...]

“Climbing over razor wire fences, taking to sea in leaking boats or stowing away in airless containers, refugees and migrants around the world risk their lives every day in desperate attempts to find safety or a better life.” – UN High Commission for Refugees. The basics There are two types of displaced people – those [...]

The idea of Human Rights, and Girls’ Rights, is sometimes hard to grasp without examples, especially since our rights are so well protected in Canada. Learn more about human rights issues facing girls in 5 different countries: Democratic Republic of Congo WAR is the biggest threat to girls in the Congo in Africa. Years and [...]

“A woman is like a tea bag: you cannot tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.” – Nancy Reagan In politics, women and girls have the right to be both voters and leaders. But, according to the Global Gender Gap report, not one single country in the world has gender [...]