NEW YORK (8 July 2005) — Equality Empowers is the theme of this year’s World Population Day, which is commemorated each 11 July. The Population Council, an international not-for-profit research organization, recognizes the significance of gender equity every day of the year with dozens of projects dedicated to improving the status and health of the most vulnerable members of developing countries, who are often young women and girls. Council staff members use innovative strategies to promote healthy, safe, and productive transitions to adulthood, focusing on: - Child Marriage — Early marriage is a neglected human rights abuse that affects girls worldwide. If current trends continue, in the next decade 100 million girls will marry before they turn 18. Research shows that girls who are married are at increased risk of social isolation, domestic violence, coerced sex, and, in some cases, HIV infection. Child marriage is closely associated with no or low levels of formal education for girls. Early age at marriage and early departure from school are byproducts of the same underlying socioeconomic conditions—poverty, low status, and social customs and beliefs—that disempower girls and women. Population Council researchers are investigating ways to better girls' lives and reduce child marriage by ensuring safe locations for girls to gather and improving social support, livelihood opportunities, health care, and opportunities for schooling. (more)
- Schooling — Formal schools are the primary setting in which most young people acquire the productive skills needed for adulthood. The school is also the most important institution outside the family for socializing young people into all dimensions of adult roles and responsibilities. In addition to socioeconomic factors that cause children to leave school early, researchers at the Population Council have found that gender inequities in some developing-country schools lead children, particularly girls, to drop out. The Council has established pilot scholarship and livelihoods programs designed to help girls stay in school, improve their educational opportunities, and delay marriage. (more)
- Changing Transitions to Adulthood in Developing Countries — The passage from childhood to adulthood is a period of momentous social, psychological, economic, and biological transitions. As of 2005, the world’s population of 10–24-year-olds is estimated to be 1.76 billion, 1.5 billion of whom are in the developing world. Council staff members have taken a leadership role in assessing the changing transitions to adulthood in developing countries—with a particular emphasis on gender—and identifying the policy implications of these changes. The Population Council helps support projects that alleviate the social isolation for girls in rural Egypt; empower married girls and first-time mothers in India; and break the cycle of poverty of Mayan girls in Guatemala. These programs are aimed at overcoming the forces that prevent women and girls from reaching their full potential and restrict them to conditions of early marriage, early and frequent childbearing, gender discrimination and violence, and repetition of the poverty cycle across generations. (more)
The Population Council is an international, nonprofit, nongovernmental research organization that seeks to improve the well-being and reproductive health of current and future generations around the world and to help achieve a humane, equitable, and sustainable balance between people and resources. The Council conducts biomedical, social science, and public health research and helps build research capacities in developing countries. Established in 1952, the Council is governed by an international board of trustees. Its New York headquarters supports a global network of regional and country offices. ### Media contacts
Melissa May, APR: mmay@popcouncil.org +1 212 339 0525
Diane Rubino: drubino@popcouncil.org +1 212 339 0617
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