“People cannot discover new oceans until they have the courage to lose sight of the shore”
Work / It’s A Girl – BBC World Service
This series of 12 radio programmes travelled to three continents to look at how girl children fare in different societies. In each country we looked at the birth of a baby girl and what that meant- whether it was a cause for celebration or a disappointment to her parents. Then we looked at a little girl starting school and finally a teenage girl. By this stage very few girls were in education. They were either married, often with children themselves and in low paid work. The exception was Kerala in Southern India which is a matriarchal society. In this society women are literate and the overall literacy rate is 100% as compared to 39% in the rest of India. The infant mortality rate is also low. Infact, Kerala, although a relatively poor state in India, has social indicators on a par with Sweden. The main theme of the programmes was that in order to develop, countries must educate girls and women. The series also dealt with the difficult subject of female genital mutilation in Kenya. Steve Hoy of the Sound Factory edited these programmes.