International World Girls' Day 2022: An important date in the calendar
Today, October 11, marks the 10th International World Girls' Day.
Why do we need a World Girls' Day? Isn't World Children's Day and World Women's Day enough? The answer is quite simple: No! Because girls' needs are still not adequately acknowledged worldwide.
According to Unicef, this has worsened due to the various current crises like corona, drought, famine and armed conflicts that affect children with extreme hardship and exacerbate inequalities for girls further. For example, if parents can no longer afford school fees, the first thing they do is leave their daughters at home. The risk of forced marriage also increases.
Unicef has compiled the most important facts about girls for World Girls' Day, and these should be a wake-up call for everyone.
Discrimination, early experiences of violence, genital mutilation, child marriages and lack of access to education - to name just a few - are still a reality. The list goes on and on and shows how important it is that World Girls' Day has been celebrated every year for the past ten years to remind people of such abuses.
Education is important!
Even though girls and women in countries such as Switzerland can lead far more equal and significantly better lives, there is still much more that needs to be done as girls and women still experience gender discrimination and often have to bring more to the table to make it in the working world, and struggle with the gender pension gap.
That's why education is important! Only when girls and women receive support and are equally involved in all aspects of society will they be able to act with self-confidence and lead independent lives.
Initiatives such as Plan International are committed to ensuring that everyone is given the prerequisites to become strong and free women and recognize their potential. With their high-profile campaigns on World Girls' Day, they make a special effort to promote girls' education.
This year, for example, young girls will once again be given the opportunity to spend a day in an important leadership position. In Switzerland, into one of the highest political offices: On October 11, 22-year-old Bettina Brunner will take over from Federal President Ignazio Cassis.
Financial education:
An important basis for a self-determined life
A self-determined life also requires financial independence. Financial topics still have little or no place in the curriculum during compulsory schooling. As a result, six out of ten women say they do not understand financial topics. And only 13 per cent invest in digital assets - the figure for men is 23 per cent. That's according to the SmartPurse Barometer 2022, a three-year study of women's financial development.
With the recently launched SmartPurse Money School App, the web platform and numerous courses and data collections, SmartPurse is making an important contribution to help women gain basic financial education and thus lead a self-determined life.
Since the beginning of October, the offering has been supplemented by a new learning platform in the Metaverse, which breaks new ground for inclusive financial education and provides a playful introduction to financial topics such as retirement planning. This is particularly urgently needed among the 18-25 age group of women - according to the SmartPurse Barometer 2022, only 37 per cent of this age group say they have a pension solution 3a in securities and most say they do not know how to make provisions.
"Another important step to provide even more young women easy access to essential financial education and experiential insight into the world of new finance. "In doing so, we are making our modest yet important contribution to achieving the U.N. Sustainability Goals, particularly financial gender equality," explains Olga Miler, Co-Founder of SmartPurse.