Why girls need a little privacy

Oh what do you know look at that – the Independent in 2018 doing a whole piece on the need for girls’ toilets in schools.

Unesco is urging governments around the world to prioritise providing single-sex toilets in schools, warning as many as 1 in 10 girls in some countries are missing out on lessons because of their period.

The UN’s education body surveyed 189 countries as part of its sixth annual gender review, obtained exclusively by The Independent ahead of International Women’s Day.

While the report found some progress had been made in gender equality in education, it said one in three countries still failed to allow equal numbers of boys and girls into primary school.

One “obstacle” to girls attending school was a lack of segregated toilets in schools, review director Manos Antoninis said, adding the agency found there was “little focus” on menstrual hygiene in schools in 21 low and middle income countries.

So sex-segregated toilets are needed for girls to be able to attend school? Is that what we’re saying?

“Improved sanitation to address adolescent girls’ concerns over privacy, particularly during menstruation, can influence their education decisions,” he said. “Single-sex toilets are desperately needed to overcome girls’ barriers to education.”

Huh. But we’ve been told it’s the worst kind of transphobia for women to say that women and girls need privacy in the toilets.

In Bangladesh, 41 per cent of schoolgirls aged between 11 and 17 reported missing three days of school every month because of a lack of adequate sanitary care, according to the report.

Meanwhile, in rural areas of west African nations including Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia, less than a fifth of schools had four or more of Unesco’s five recommended menstrual hygiene services. These include separate sex toilets with doors and locks, water and rubbish bins.

And one more thing…

Unesco also for the first time recommended children be taught about power dynamics between boys and girls in school.

Teaching children about the relationship between the genders in sex education classes would not only tackle gender-based violence, but also help reduce teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, Unesco said.

Not a word about trans girls in the whole piece. Was anyone sacked?

17 Responses to “Why girls need a little privacy”