Gender inequality starts early and keeps women at a disadvantage throughout their lives. In some countries, infant girls are less likely to survive than infant boys because their parents favour the boys and neglect the girls - even though biologically, infant girls should survive in greater numbers.

Girls are more likely to drop out of school and to receive less education than boys because of discrimination, education expenses, and household duties.

In 1995, governments around the world signed the Beijing Platform For Action, promising to take specific action to prevent discrimination against women. Yet today, more than 40 countries have laws which discriminate against women and treat them as second-class citizens. In many countries, women are subjected to violence, which the government does nothing to stop because their laws approve practices like 'honour' killings, (where a woman is killed by a family member if she does something which is thought to bring shame on the family), marital rape and wife beating. In several countries laws make it more difficult for a woman to be independent because they restrict women's property, employment and citizenship rights.

Read the text and decide in groups of 3 or 4 students what type of activity design might be appropriate for secondary education: think about the skills students could practice, the linguistic content, the type of activity, class interaction, etc.

(Students have to read the text and decide which specific activities could be designed around the text: they have to specify which skills are going to be included (reading, writing, speaking, listening or oral interaction), decide what the focus on linguistic content may be, the specific type of activity, if the interaction is going to be T - S, T - Ss, S -S, etc.)