he world, girls face challenges and outcomes far worse than boys.

A fact born out by research on different continents and in different societies.

But today's guest says that the challenges facing girls shouldn't overwhelm us, they should inspire us.

She's Dale Hanson Bourke, this week on "Story in the Public Square."

(light music) (light music continues) Hello and welcome to "Story in the Public Square" where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G. Wayne Miller, also with Salve's Pell Center.

- Our guest this week is Dale Hanson Bourke, a business owner, foundation president, and author whose new book is "Strong Girls, Strong World."

Dale, thank you so much for being with us.

- Thank you so much for having me.

- Well, congratulations on "Strong Girls, Strong World."

I learned a lot reading it about the challenges facing girls, literally around the world.

What inspired you to write it?

- Well, I'm a relatively new grandmother, so when my granddaughter Evie was born, I of course imagined her to have all kinds of wonderful things happening in her future.

She was, of course, the most brilliant, beautiful, incredible little girl, but I'd also traveled around the world and met all kinds of little girls who would never have the potential to do the things that she did or would be able to do, because of their place where they were born and just the circumstances of their birth.

So I was really struck by the fact that we could have all these hopes and dreams for Evie, but other little girls probably would fall short because of the circumstances in which they were born.

- Well, in fact, you write girls, and I'm quoting here, "Girls are at a disadvantage on almost every measure in almost every part of the world."

You know, I was struck by that because there's a part of me that wants to believe that we're doing better.

Why aren't we doing better?

- Yeah.

Well, we are doing better on some measures and in some parts of the world, but there's still a very strong patriarchal system in a lot of countries in the world.

Some of it's institutionalized, some of it's literally legal.

There's laws against girls being able to move forward.

Some of it's cultural.

And so, you know, it's a whole variety of things.

And frankly, I was surprised by some of the things that I discovered when I started writing the book because I learned a lot about where the disadvantages lie and also how we can remove those obstacles and help girls soar.

- So Dale, the book serves as a call for action for readers and it's filled with many ways that people can take that kind of action.

You have taken action in your life.

Why is that important to you, part one, and part two, why should people answer that call who read the book?

- Sure.

Well, I think we, we can easily get overwhelmed.

We can hear about the challenges facing girls, facing all the issues of the world and think, well, they're just too big for me, or it's something that someone else should take on.

But there are also so many opportunities for girls that can be changed because we do take action.

And so what I've tried to do in the book is give people every opportunity to even take one small step.

To me, the most important thing is to do something.

It doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't have to be a huge action, but do something.

And as you start to do that, you'll start to realize that you can make a connection.

For me, for example, one time I was at a luncheon where we were packing backpacks for children.

And I, you know, I thought, well, this is a nice little activity, and we put a little note into each child.

Well, a few years later, I was in Jordan and I saw Syrian refugee children with their little backpacks and they were pulling out these notes that meant so much to them because somebody had actually cared.

So there is a connection.

It really does make a difference.

And when I see things like that, I'm just humbled that we can, in a very small way, make a huge difference.

- And, you know, I think that's a very important message.

It's so easy to feel overwhelmed by all the challenges that face people living on the planet and the planet itself.

Indeed.

So kudos for that.

- And in fact, you know, Dale, when you and I talked about this too, this was something that you really wanted to underscore is that we're gonna talk about some pretty bleak realities facing girls across the world in this conversation.

You did not want the audience to be overwhelmed by the enormity of this.

- No, don't, I mean, it certainly is daunting, if you will, but I would also say if this was your daughter, you would want her to have every opportunity.

All these little girls out there that have so much potential.

And the fact is that there is a line that can be drawn between us and them.

There are things we can do, you know, even a well, digging a well, which I had never really considered to be that important, is such a huge thing.

It can change the lives of girls in a little village where they're the ones who are having to gather the water and because of that, they're not able to go to school.

And yet, you know, maybe you can't personally pay for a well, but maybe you get your school together or your community together and you can build a well and they'll actually name a well after you.

And it's a very cool thing.

I mean, you've changed the lives of dozens of girls in a village because you've built a well.

- So we're talking about girls here.

Why not all children, including boys?

- Well, and I appreciate that question.

I'm the mother of two boys, so I'm very- - They'll appreciate it too.

- Trying not forget about.

But you know, it is true that girls have more obstacles in most cases.

And and that quote that you quoted before was actually from the Gates Foundation, from a study in which they looked at girls all over the world.

And when you look at the indicators, they have less of a chance to go to school.

They're less healthy, they have less advantages in many, many cases than boys.

And so really, we're not talking about leaving boys out.

We're trying to bring girls up to a level where they can be equal participants and also, you know, contribute to a community where boys and girls are more healthy.

- So why are girls so important to our collective future?

Collective meaning all of us?

- Sure, well girls have so much potential that it doesn't get used if they don't get educated, if they don't go to school, if they don't stay healthy, if they marry early, we lose all that potential.

I mean, the World Bank even has statistics about how much money is lost in our economies because girls are not participating fully in the economies of the world.

So girls who don't get these chances, like my granddaughter will, are really, are our entire communities and countries are losing out because of that.

- Yeah, Dale, I, you know, I, your book introduced me to some things that I was not familiar with and one of those things was the phrase, "missing girls."

And so in the context of this book and your work, who are these missing girls and what does it say about the challenges that girls face globally?

- Yeah, I mean, this is something that happens even early on.

So countries that have evolved far enough to have prenatal testing.

Now if they still have a culture that is really favors boys, unfortunately prenatal testing has ended up in abortions of many, many girls.

Now, we don't have statistics 'cause people don't, you know, they don't self-report that they've aborted a baby girl.

But we have now population statistics that show we have an uneven population in a number of countries where obviously girls have been left out, they're "missing girls" is what they call them.

And the population is far more male than female because parents have chosen to abort baby girls.

- So Jim said we were gonna get into the specific challenges, and so let's do that facing girls and women around the world.

One of them is lack of sanitation and poor health.

- [Dale] Yeah.

- That's actually two related issues.

Talk about that.

- Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I, again, I didn't realize, and it's, you know, you think about it and it makes sense, but at the time, because of our culture, we don't think about it.

But girls who go into puberty and start menstruating, many of the schools do not have facilities for them.

They don't have toilets, they don't have a private place for the girls.

And so they'll stay home during their period, then they start missing school or they'll just drop out of school at that point.

And it's a huge problem because that's the critical point you want girls to stay in school and in fact, they start dropping out of school at a very high rate.

So there've been a number of interventions that have tried to help either bring sanitation and bring hygiene to girls, especially in schools, and also to provide products.

Like there's something called the Pad Project that provides menstrual products for girls.

Something that again, allows them to stay in school.

It's just, the end result is they get to stay in school and get an education, which is so important.

- What about healthcare?

What are the inequities there around the world and indeed, perhaps even in the United States?

- Yeah, there definitely are inequities.

And some of it is just, you can look at the statistics and see that boys get immunized more often than girls.

They get taken to clinics more often than girls.

And a lot of times girls also are exposed to more problems.

For example, they are the ones who are cooking in the home with an open fire.

They're the ones who then have lung problems because of that.

They're the ones who are gathering the water and it's dangerous to gather water, to go to a watering hole where all their animals and everything else is gathering.

So, I mean, there are a number of things that expose girls to more hazards and then they often get less care during their lifetime.

So it's a huge inequity.

- Yeah, Dale, you mentioned inoculations and you've got a pretty decent discussion of the potential for vaccines to help improve the health and the lives of girls around the world.

And as I read that though, I couldn't help but wonder, what does America's vaccine hesitancy look like in other parts of the world, just based on your travels?

Do you have a sense of that?

- It depends on where you are.

There certainly are certain religious sects that are very concerned about vaccines.

I know that in some very conservative Muslim countries, they don't, you know, they're not very favorable toward vaccines.

In some countries there are, you know, it's more of superstition that starts and evolves and people start to have superstitions about vaccines that they're going to, you know, actually create the disease instead of cure it or prevent it.

So it varies all over the world.

But yeah, there are certain places where there are vaccine hesitations.

Yeah.

- Another absolutely critical issue is education.

Give us an overview, and I understand, I realize that it varies country by country and even region by region.

But talk about the obstacles to education and the importance of education to girls.

- Yeah, sure.

Well, we've made good strides.

Again, I wanna add some hope here because we've made a lot of strides, especially in primary schooling, so that we've tried to educate more little girls through their primary years.

But girls are looked upon as a great resource for gathering water, for working in the home, for taking care of their younger siblings.

And so they're often not allowed to go to school because they're needed in the home to do these things.

Whereas the boys are allowed to go to school or encouraged to go to school because they're seen as the one who's gonna be the primary breadwinner.

It really starts to go down at secondary school.

And some of that has to do with the hygiene issues we talked about where girls just don't have a good option for going to school.

They also have long walks to school.

You know, schooling is not, one of the things I realized in the book is, you know, there isn't a school bus coming to pick up children in some of these rural areas, girls and boys have to walk long ways to get to a school.

And that again, can be a hazard for girls.

Girls can be assaulted, can deal with all sorts of things along the way.

And that's why, again, one of the solutions is they're giving bicycles to girls to help them ride bikes to schools.

It's a wonderful opportunity to help girls actually get to school if they wanna get to school and not have to walk miles and miles.

- What happens when we educate a girl?

- Oh, everything.

All kinds of great things happen when we educate a girl.

First of all tends to not get married so early and early marriage is a problem for reasons we can discuss in a minute.

But she tends to marry later.

She tends to have fewer children.

She tends to make sure her own children are educated and have good health and good hygiene.

She contributes to her community in ways that are significant.

The World Bank, again, measures some of the ways the output happens from a girl who has been educated.

And it's truly amazing that a girl then can contribute to her community and her entire country when she's educated.

- You know, Dale, you mentioned the issue of early marriage and getting ready for this episode, you drew our attention to a short video from the great people at World Vision.

Let's watch that together now and then we'll discuss it - So, "Someday I hope to marry, but most definitely I am not in a hurry."

Would you tell us more about the young woman we saw, the young girl we saw in that video and the issue that she's raising for us?

- Right.

Well, little Shamema is only 10 years old and she is, I think we'd all agree the most extraordinary little girl.

I mean, you look at her and think, you know, this girl could run a country.

- Yeah.

- I mean, she has so much potential.

And yet at 10 years of age, her biggest fear is that she's going to have to get married soon.

And that she won't be able to finish her education.

That she will have to have children early and she will not be able to continue on the trajectory that she is on right now.

And to me, Shamema is such a great example of you look at this little girl and you think, "Oh, we should empower her.

We should give her every chance.

She's gonna change the world."

And yet how tragic that at 10 years of age, this is her concern that she's going to have to get married soon.

- You devote, or you dedicate another chapter to protecting vulnerable girls.

And you wrote that quote, "It was probably the most difficult chapter to write."

- Yeah.

- Why?

- Well, it is sort of the dark underbelly of what happens in the world.

Girls who fall through the cracks, who don't have somebody caring for them, who don't have someone taking care of them, fall into trafficking and to all types of really difficult circumstances.

So I wrote about that because, first of all, we have a huge refugee crisis right now in the world.

We have unaccompanied children who have, they've been separated from their parents and girls especially are super vulnerable when that happens.

We have a lot of street children and girls who live on the street are very vulnerable to either being assaulted or being trafficked.

And we just have a lot of broken systems that don't look out for these vulnerable little girls.

So we really need to make sure that we look out for girls because when they fall through the cracks really terrible things happen to them.

- So this is an issue in this country also.

And I guess this is kind of a larger question.

Is there political action that can or could be taken in this country, 'cause we're in this country, to change the trajectory that you're describing here?

- Sure, I mean, if you're talking about this country, one of the issues I think is we have a foster care system that is broken.

And a lot of attention is being brought to that now because I think it's so broken that children, especially girls, will fall out of the foster care system and onto the streets because they really don't have a good option.

And that happens in other countries too.

There are foster programs in other countries.

Unfortunately, they often are abused and people who become foster parents, I mean, there are some wonderful foster parents, but there are some who are not as trustworthy.

And we need better systems for caring for children who somehow lose their parental controls and parents who care for them.

And it happens, especially in this country because of the drug issues that we're facing.

We've got so many parents who, I mean, one of the new terms that I learned it was that children are literally unwanted.

They're left behind by their parents because they can't take care of them.

And it's heartbreaking.

- There a long history of this in this country.

I've written about it many times actually.

Is there the political will to change that?

And again, I understand it, this will vary by state and by region, but is there any consensus or growing consensus that we have to fix this?

Because, you know, young girls who are in that position and also young boys, the outcomes are almost inevitably bad.

'Cause you're dealing- - Yes, yes, yes.

- [Wayne] You're dealing with kids at a very young age, and that's when brains are forming and and so forth.

- Right, well, I think one of the most important things about the foster care system is that former foster children have come together and formed a group that is looking, is really pushing for change in the foster system, which I think is wonderful because they've experienced it and they know how broken it is, and they're asking for help.

So I think that's very, very much a positive thing.

But I also would say to individuals, if you can even become a short-term foster parent, that's a wonderful thing to be able to do just to help a child who's in crisis.

If you can even do it short-term, a few days for a week, whatever.

That's one of the ways that you can really make a difference in the life of a child.

- You know, Dale, you do a remarkable job of highlighting in the book some of the just angels on Earth who are in the non-profit communities and the non-governmental organizations and the charities that are working throughout the world to help raise up girls.

And anybody who reads the book is gonna get lots of ideas of how they can support them.

But I'm curious, we're taping this a couple days after the anniversary of 9/11, and I spent the decade after that working in the national security community thinking about those issues.

And one of the big takeaways from the Arab Development Report in the about 2005, 2006 period ,was that in places where women were excluded from society, bad things happen.

And that was pretty much the takeaway.

I'm wondering on the level of international policy, government policy, are governments doing enough to protect girls and to protect women so that they're contributing members of society on a global scale?

- Well, no, the answer is no.

- Tee that up.

- But the changes, you know, but I am hopeful that there's change.

I mean, we have pockets of change.

I mean, we can look at Rwanda as an example here we now have more women than men in the legislature.

I mean, we are seeing women rise in power in many countries and being welcomed even in some very male dominated countries.

Women are rising in power.

We have more women leaders than ever before who are seeing these issues.

We watched, we see in Liberia how a woman leader really turned that country around.

So I do believe there is hope.

And I also think that we're using the power of the U.S. policy to promote girls in education.

For example, we've introduced legislation that says that our USAID money and other dollars that we spend overseas should be attached to showing some progress with girls, which I think is a very hopeful thing that we can, you know, if we're going to be investing in countries, then we should ask for outcomes that help bring girls to the same level as boys.

- One of the solutions that you highlight is microfinance.

Can you tell us what that is and how that applies, how that would help girls and women?

- Yeah.

Microfinance is really a remarkable program that happens, it can happen anywhere all over the world and it's really making small loans, mostly to women.

Almost every microfinance institution or NGO that has used this has found that women are the best bet for making a loan to them.

So you make a loan to a woman for a certain period of time and she uses it to create some sort of small business.

Maybe she sells vegetables from a small stand or she does a, so she buys a sewing machine and starts a sewing project and she repays that loan with interest, with a small amount of interest, and then she's able to get another loan.

And sometimes women come together in what they call trust groups then and they sort of cross collateralize their loans so that if one woman becomes sick, the other women will jump in and help her.

But what it does is actually grow economies from the ground up.

And it's a truly remarkable institution in the sense that it's making a difference in the economies of countries, even though it starts out with loans as little as 10 or $20.

But these loans then grow.

I've watched, I've seen women in countries, I've seen it in Uganda for example, where a woman is given a calf and I've seen her grow that into a whole herd of cattle within a few years.

Or a woman is given a sewing machine or she buys a sewing machine with her loan, and then she ends up employing a dozen other women and they have a whole sewing collective that's going on and they're all supporting their families.

And one of the first things that women do when they get income is they make sure their children get education.

So sometimes it means that they can now afford the uniform that a girl needs to be able to go to school, or they can pay the small school fee so she can go to school.

But women almost always turn around and take that money and invest it in their children, which is how we break the back of poverty really, that's how we change, break the cycle of poverty.

- That is a great place for us to leave this conversation.

Dale Hanson Bourke, the book is "Strong Girls, Strong World."

Thank you so much for being with us today.

And that is all the time we have this week.

But if you wanna know more about "Story in the Public Square," you can find us on social media or visit pellcenter.org.

We can always catch you up on previous episodes.

For G.Wayne Miller, I'm Jim Ludes, asking you to join us again next time for more "Story in the Public Square."

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