GIRL FACTS

Here are some startling facts concerning women around the world:

• Your left lung is smaller than your right lung to make room for your heart.
• 730,000 teenage girls will get pregnant this year.
• In Africa, about 3 million girls a year are at risk for genital mutilation- more than 8,000 per day.
• A new report says of the estimated 300,000 child soldiers around the world, about 40 percent of them are girls. The girls are often front-line fighters or used as porters or cooks. Many are sexually abused.
• An estimated 100 million girls are involved in child labor worldwide.
• More than 900 million girls and women are living on less than $1 a day
• In India, says BBC News, “…government statistics show that husbands and in-laws killed nearly 7,000 women in 2001 over inadequate dowry payments.” The practice, named after the murder method used, is known as “bride burning.”
• On Aug. 14, 2008, the CBS program 60 Minutes reported that, “In the last ten years in Congo, hundreds of thousands of women have been raped, most of them gang raped.” Sexual violence has become a war tactic as a way of subduing civilians.
• Writing in The Guardian (May 13, 2002), John Gittings says “An alarming rise in the sex ratio of newborn infants in China suggests that increasing numbers of female fetuses are being aborted by parents intent on having a male child.” Normally, 106 males are born for every 100 females; in China the ratio is 116 to 100. The group Gendercide Watch says there are no reliable statistics on how many girls are killed but “a minimum estimate would place the casualties in the hundreds of thousands.”
• In a broad swath of African countries from Senegal in the west to Tanzania in the east, as many as two million girls suffer genital mutilation every year. The World Health Organization terms the practice a reflection of “deep-rooted inequality between the sexes, and constitutes an extreme form of discrimination against women. It is nearly always carried out on minors and is a violation of the rights of children.”
• iAbolish, an American anti-slavery group states, “Approximately 35,000 individuals live as sex slaves in Thailand today. Sold or lured to big cities, these girls… are forced - under the threat of violence and with no freedom to leave the brothel - to provide sex for any and all paying customers. Sex tourism in Thailand is a growing industry, perpetuating the demand for sex slaves.”
• According to the United Nations the ancient tradition of “compensation marriages” continues today in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and parts of the Middle East. Underage girls are handed over to settle disputes between clans and families. “The number of girls and young women victimized by this custom is not known, but investigators consider it be in the tens of thousands.”
• Oxfam Canada reports that, “Of the 1.3 billion people who live in extreme poverty worldwide, 70 percent are women and girls. Systematic gender discrimination—the denial of women’s basic human rights—is a major cause of poverty.”