Educated Women Are Dangerous: The Long Struggle for Women’s Access to Higher Education

According to UN statistics, by 2030, more than half of all young people won’t have the basic skills needed to succeed in the work-force. Among these, girls and young women are particularly likely to be left behind, facing considerable barriers to education. Girls with an education are less likely to be forced into child marriage, experience violence, or suffer from poor health. Nonetheless, from a historical point of view, educated women have always been considered something unnatural, even dangerous, for the stability of society. Investing in girls' education means having autonomous, economically independent women and thus a possible risk to domestic and family stability in a society that has been patriarchal for millennia. Thus, retracing the stages of women's access to education in the West allows us to understand the overcoming of prejudices and stereotypes that still characterize large parts of the world today.