Reimagining Education: Where do all the brilliant girls go?

I find myself asking one question: where do all the brilliant girls go? I will tell you. Boys and girls sit in the same classrooms, they are taught the same curriculum, and they write the same examinations. Yet somewhere along the way, their life outcomes begin to diverge. So I began to wonder: are the things girls are learning, or perhaps not learning, betraying their future outcomes?

The question really hit me during the COVID-19 pandemic when women, who were once those girls sitting in our classrooms, seemed to bear the ‘professional brunt’ of the crisis. They carried the burden of unpaid care work at home and at work as nurses and frontline health workers. Many also worked in the informal economy as necessity entrepreneurs, so when economies shut down, their livelihoods disappeared almost overnight. Then the world announced that the future of work was digital, yet women were disproportionately excluded because the gendered digital divide was real. And while there was food glut, the people we often associate most with food production, women, remained concentrated at the subsistence end of agriculture instead of participating across the value chain in ways that truly create wealth. Should I go on?

That period left me with far more questions than answers. Around the same time, I proposed a solution that was selected as one of the 35 winning ideas for solving global challenges for Our Future, Our Voices, an initiative by the International Youth Foundation and FedEx. I was invited to present my idea, Transforming Education: Making Girls Masters of Their Destiny and World. While that idea has evolved considerably since then, and I still think it has the makings of a TED Talk, one conviction has remained with me: if we are serious about changing women’s professional and economic outcomes, then we must fundamentally rethink what it means to educate girls

What Should Fulfillment Look Like for Women and Girls?
Even though my parents gave me the gift of a traditional education, personal agency drove me towards self-education. Personal circumstances demanded self-reliance, and looking back now, I believe those were the moments my purpose was birthed. They shaped my lifelong commitment to raising purpose-driven women.

But the more I pursued fulfilment, the more I found myself questioning education systems and their intersection with harmful gender norms. I began to notice something that troubled me. School is supposed to be where children discover their gifts, develop their thinking, refine their talents, and learn to solve problems. Yet alongside the formal curriculum, girls are often enrolled in another curriculum altogether: the hidden curriculum of gender norms.

It teaches lessons that never appear on the timetable or lesson plan. Through classroom interactions, textbooks, and school culture, girls slowly learn who society expects them to become. They see men portrayed as leaders, inventors, scientists, and decision-makers, while women are more often shown as caregivers and homemakers. They learn that appearance matters as much as, if not more than, intellect; that STEM and engineering somehow belong to boys; that being quiet, helpful, and agreeable is rewarded more readily than being bold, curious, or assertive. They learn to seek permission instead of exercising agency, to avoid risk instead of embracing it, and to shrink themselves so they fit comfortably within expectations.

These lessons are rarely written into the curriculum, yet they become some of the most enduring lessons girls receive. By the time we begin worrying about occupational segregation, leadership gaps in the boardroom, or the shortage of women in STEM, many of those outcomes have already been rehearsed in classrooms. To me, that is one of the greatest betrayals of girls’ education. Because what is the value of educating a girl if, somewhere along the way, she learns to negotiate away her own potential?

So, What Would It Take to Educate Girls for Fulfilment?
For many girls, education prepares them for competence, while gender norms prepare them for compromise. Schools do not simply reflect society; they reproduce it. The same biases we later complain about as glass ceilings in boardrooms, parliaments, and workplaces are often rehearsed years earlier inside classrooms. At the same time, we tell adult women to “lean in,” their childhood socialization has already trained them to step back. Until those two systems begin speaking the same language, we should not be surprised that education reforms continue to produce limited gains in women’s economic participation and leadership.

I often say I excelled in spite of these systems. As a young girl, I navigated an education system with social realities girls carry into the classroom, including body shaming, unrealistic standards of beauty, and the quiet psychological battles that rarely feature in education policy but profoundly shape how girls see themselves and who they believe they can become.

If education is helping to reproduce gender norms, then education can also become one of the most powerful places to interrupt them. That is good news because systems are designed. And whatever is designed can be redesigned. Around the world, countries are already redesigning education systems in ways that deliberately expand what girls believe is possible.

Starting with what girls see.

Imagine if every textbook that entered a classroom underwent a gender audit before approval. What if governments required girls to be represented as scientists, engineers, innovators, and political leaders just as often as boys? What if boys were equally represented as caregivers, teachers, and fathers actively participating in domestic life?

Countries are already doing this. Kerala, India, redesigned school textbooks to deliberately challenge traditional stereotypes by portraying fathers cooking, cleaning, and sharing care responsibilities. Sweden goes even further. The national curriculum requires schools to actively counter traditional gender roles, ensuring learning materials present girls and boys in diverse occupations and life roles. Representation is not cosmetic. It is curriculum.

Then rethink how we teach, not just what we teach.

Teachers unconsciously shape confidence every day through who they call upon, who they encourage to lead, whose mistakes they tolerate, and whose curiosity they reward. If girls are consistently praised for being compliant while boys are encouraged to take risks, schools are producing very different adults long before graduation.

Across Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania, the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) has demonstrated that this can be changed through Gender-Responsive Pedagogy. Teachers are trained to examine their own classroom practices, ensuring girls receive equal opportunities to lead experiments, answer complex questions, manage equipment and occupy positions of responsibility. In Viet Nam, gender-responsive career guidance has intentionally encouraged more girls to consider engineering and technology careers.

Schools should also stop treating girls’ biology as an interruption to learning.

Far too often, menstruation remains surrounded by silence and stigma, with girls paying the price through absenteeism and diminished confidence. Schools should treat menstrual health as educational infrastructure rather than a personal problem.

Scotland recognised this by becoming the first country to guarantee free period products in educational institutions. Meanwhile, India’s Gender Equity Movement in Schools (GEMS) brings girls and boys together to discuss gender, puberty, and relationships, helping replace embarrassment with understanding while challenging harmful stereotypes before they become lifelong beliefs.

Finally, perhaps we have underestimated what sports teach girls.

Sports are not simply about physical activity. They teach resilience, teamwork, competition, confidence, and leadership; the very capabilities we later expect from executives, entrepreneurs, and public leaders.

The United States demonstrated the power of this through Title IX, legislation that transformed girls’ access to school sports by requiring educational institutions to provide equitable athletic opportunities through federal funding for girls and boys educational programs. Decades later, its impact extended far beyond playing fields, contributing to higher female participation in leadership and the workforce.

Perhaps this is the education reform conversation we should be having. How to intentionally raise women who leave school, believing they have both the potential and opportunity to lead, build, invent, negotiate, create wealth, and solve problems. Because if we keep educating girls for competence while socialising them for compromise, we should not be surprised when brilliant girls disappear somewhere between the classroom and the boardroom. Maybe the real question was never where all the brilliant girls went. Maybe the better question is this: what kind of education would have allowed them to stay?