1. Nearly 22.6 million children (ages 5 through 16) are not in school in Pakistan. In fact, 44 percent of boys and 56 percent of girls in Pakistan do not go to school. Both boys and girls are being denied the right to an education; however, girls are disproportionately affected.
2. Early marriage interrupts young girls’ education. This common Pakistani custom places intense societal pressures that restrict girls from continuing their education once married. In fact, 21 percent of girls are married by their eighteenth birthday, and three percent are married by the age of 15. For every year a girl continues her secondary education, she reduces her chances of becoming a child bride by 3.4 percent. Currently, the government is working to raise the legal marriage age to 18 in order to protect these girls.
3. The Taliban restricts girls’ rights to education.
I would expect the exact opposite. Young people want and need to conform. Trying to stick out early without enough social clout is dangerous.
Western kids are just as fiercely conservative as their Pakistani peers. But in the west it was the hippie generation that accidentally created all the norms that everyone here have to conserve and conform to. We are no more free than the Pakistanis to decide for ourselves what to believe.
