UCLA Center for the Study of Women

One of the United Nations’ (UN) eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aims ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling by 2015. Highlighting the need to educate girls, the UN asserts that meeting the Education Goal will speed progress toward every other Millennium Goal, asserting that educating children helps reduce poverty and promote gender equality. “It is inextricably linked to Goal 3 – gender parity – as universal primary education by definition requires gender parity.”1