UNICEF: Girls' rights in the spotlight as key to development

http://www.unicef.org/adolescence/index_53426.html

NEW YORK, 26 April 2010 International experts have gathered in New York this week to find new ways to strengthen the rights of adolescent girls.

Their three-day seminar, Adolescent Girls Cornerstone of Society: Building Evidence and Policies for Inclusive Societies, began today. It was organized by UNICEF and the New School Graduate Program in International Affairs.

At the start of the seminar, writer and New York University Law School Professor Carol Gilligan presented the latest research on adolescent girls. The data show that as they grow up, girls instinctively resist becoming part of a society that does not value them as highly as their brothers.

Girls resistance is key to the realization of what I see as a feminist vision, she explained. That is not an issue of women or men, or a battle between women and men, but one of the great liberation movements in human history ... the movement to free democracy from patriarchy.