Advocates for girls’ and women’s education in developing countries were thrilled with the recent announcement that the U.S. House of Representatives has passed legislation to increase the number of educational scholarships available to women in Pakistan through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Currently, scholarships for young Pakistanis are administered by the USAID Merit and Needs-Based Scholarship Program, one of the many initiatives that comprise America’s comprehensive educational assistance program in Pakistan. During the program’s first phase, over 1,800 scholarships were awarded to Pakistani students to enable them to study at universities across Pakistan. More than 850 of these scholarship recipients went on to earn undergraduate or graduate-level degrees.
The legislation recently passed by the House will result in 3,000 new scholarships, of which 50 percent will be designated specifically for women. Supporters of the bill in question, including its sponsor, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, called access to education a societal “game-changer” and stressed the critical role that educated women can play in developing countries, particularly in terms of increasing economic opportunities for their families and communities. The new bill is known as the Malala Yousafzai Scholarship Act in honor of the young Pakistani student who was shot by the Taliban in 2012 for her outspoken advocacy of girls’ and women’s education.