Walking to School Through the Land Mines

It began, I believe, with the Nike Foundation. "Invest in a girl and she will do the rest." The idea, to put it simply, is to spend a teeny bit of money enabling a girl from a underdeveloped nation to attend sufficient school that she attains literacy, then let her return to her familial duties and watch the improvements roll on in. This concept is based on the following observation: When women and girls earn income, they reinvest 90 percent of that income into their families; men reinvest only 30 to 40 percent.

Known now as "The Girl Effect," the amazing ripple effect of educating one single adolescent girl is now behind social and economic improvement movements in countries from China to Botswana and back up to Pakistan. Health, wealth and welfare all improve noticeably when girls are allowed to gain literacy. Population growth subsides. Infant and maternal mortality plummet. And if wars are society's cruel means of doing to men what childbirth does to women in areas without prenatal care and natal medical expertise, then perhaps we might even expect to see the grim statistics of war deaths slow somewhat, too.

Take a girl to school today. Give her a book and a notebook and a pencil. Better yet, give her an iMac notebook and a book and a good lunch. Give her a safe place to learn, a place where she can decide for herself whether or not she wants to wear a hijab. Leave the burkas at the door please; shoes are optional, except in wintry climates. The boys are either already at school or they're out in the fields learning to wield the heavy blade of a machete. Let the old men and women fix the lunches and watch the crops dry up in the fields for lack of rain. Send a girl to school today.

The Girl Effect is a very wonderful effect. Educated girls return to their families and communities and share their newfound knowledge. It spreads. Conditions improve. Other girls go to school and the ripples continue to spread. It's just about the best thing happening in un- and under-developed countries of the world today, especially if you take the time to stitch it loosely to some of the great work being done with mini-grants and cottage industries in parts of Africa, again, using women as economic producers. And yet you may have noticed a note of futility in my narrative voice today.

One, every time I think of this unknown adolescent girl heading off to school, I can't help but notice a shadowy shape leaning against the doorway of her home. It's a man, and there's a weapon slung over his shoulder or stuck in the waistband of his trousers. It's a soldier. And at some point he's going to rape our adolescent girl, right now heading off to school with a pocketful of hope and a little something to eat at lunchtime. And at some point he will kill someone and at some point some other soldier will kill him. Meanwhile, our slight girl, slight glimmer of hope, is walking lightly down the dusty road to school. If the Girl Effect is truly to take hold and spread, we need to get this man out of the doorway of her home, too. We need to stop the violence.

It seems a little unfair to leave the salvation of the world up to this slight figure in loose clothing heading down a faraway road with a song in her heart. Girls are great, no doubt about it, but it shouldn't be left up to them. The ripples of educating girls do spread over the pools of our interconnected lives. But in all this talk about the phenomenon of female motivation, I find another thought running like a river alongside this newer, stronger current, a babble I've been conscious of for as long as I can remember and then some, back into the rivers that flowed through my mother's veins and my grandmothers' and their mothers back in the Old Country: "A woman's work is never done..or appreciated...or paid for...or..."

It's time to take that weapon away from the man in the doorway. It's time to take away nuclear development options not only from North Korea and Iran, but from Russia and yes from ourselves. It's time to quit organizing men into armies as if they have nothing better to do. The women of this world wouldn't need their protection if they would only stop being soldiers. Then maybe a woman's work, a girl's effect, might be truly accomplished.