The Avon Echo

by Simone Bender

Arooj Khalid was 14 years old when she came to the realization that the world was in a state of mind so abhorrent, it was nearly past saving. The shots fired on TV, the bullet that penetrated the skin of a girl her same age simply because of her desire to go to school: Khalid would never be able to view her home country of Pakistan the same. Something had to be done.

​According to data advertised by board members for the Youth Journalism Organization, over 129 million girls in the world are currently not in school, specifically in underdeveloped areas, because of the over-enforced gender roles, discretion of anti-women’s-education advocates, and apparent lack of successful female adults and educators in overwhelming parts of the international globe.

​“In Pakistan, there are a lot of areas where because a family is struggling financially, they will marry off their daughters, as they don’t have food to feed them,” said Khalid. “So they go on to get married and then they have children and it becomes harder for them to study.”

​Khalid, who has taken the horrors she once saw on TV and dedicated her life to eliminating them, expressed her deep sorrow for the girls she has seen confined to stereotypical gender roles in what she refers to as FCV countries-areas in constant crisis state featuring fragility, conflict, or violence.

​“In these [FCV] contexts, girls are 90% more likely not to go to school compared to a context where there’s no violence and conflict,” said Khalid. “Even out of that context, girls are 2.5 times more likely to be out of school than boys. So even if they get the chance to go to school, girls may still not.”

​One of those girls who was not able to attend school because of the female vision she was confined to goes by the name of Saba. Saba, a citizen in a designated FCV area, was forced to become a full-time maid at the age of 12 under the motivation of being able to send her brother, the male of the family, to school.

​“Whenever I think about where I got this passion or where I got this idea to work for girls’ education, I always think back to her,” said Khalid. “The only motivation she had to continue…was that her brother would go to school and then maybe that would mean a better future for both of them.”

​Khalid, upon starting her own initiative to advocate for these abused girls, sought to end the tyranny preventing these girls from becoming educated, and through her onsite investigations was able to expose the systemic causes behind these issues.

​“We went into a community and asked the people which resources they weren’t using, and they said ‘our daughters’. They said ‘our daughters’ because [school] isn’t safe for them. They just stay home and take care of their siblings or housework…and we had to do something with them,” said Khalid.

​The systemic malice went further than unsafe environments though, according to Khalid. Corrupt governing officials in countries, such as her home of Pakistan, would actually go as far as to fabricate evidence of schooling for girls in order to get away with not providing it.

​“The ‘Ghost Schools’ are schools that exist only on paper. The government documents will say that there’s a school, that so much funding is going to this school, but when you actually go to the physical location…there’s no building, no teacher, no principal. It’s a Ghost School,” said Khalid.

​And it’s not just the safety and systemic problems keeping girls in the home, Khalid said. The girls themselves have actually been so conditioned to the thought of an “idealistic” society where women stay in their place.

​“If something were to happen, there’s no one to support the girls and stuff like that,” said Khalid. “There are no woman teachers for them to look up to.”

​The struggle for equal access to education continues on, but activists like Khalid will not stand for the unfair treatment plaguing the women of today. They continue to fight against the women who push girls away from their right to education, even through setting examples in their own successful lives.

​“I’m doing my Master’s right now [at Harvard University] but I have to constantly remind myself that it’s not just a Master’s. It’s something just as valuable as anything else,” said Khalid. “Our education matters just as much as anyone else’s.”

​While it still pains Khalid to see the torture young women she used to be just like have to bear, she will not be resting anytime soon. Her work protecting girls abandoned by their families and providing education in FCV areas has made an impact so great that many will never forget her. But even now, Khalid still thinks back to the girls who motivated her to become who she is. Malala, Saba-they’re the real ones who won’t be forgotten.