Editorial: Inequalities in Access to Education: Failing to Provide Skills-Building and Empowerment to Girls

Abstract

Seventy years ago in 1942, William Beveridge identified five giants of the mid 20th Century-want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness. To mark this seminal work, JPA commissioned five thought pieces identifying the new giants of the 21st Century-poverty, lack of access to health care, lack of access to education, disabled life expectancy, failing intergenerational reciprocity. The first Giants of the 21 st Century: longevity and disability by Harper (2011) argued that the 21 st century will likely see a significant increase in disability, and at the same time a shift from it being a life course experience to one associated with old age. In the second, Giants of the 21 st Century: health inequalities and social justice, Howse (2012) proposed that equity in the provision of healthcare is now an uncontested goal for modern healthcare systems. Giants of the 21 st Century: Global Poverty, Inequalities and Ageing in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Focus for Policy and Scholarship by Aboderin (2012) focused on sub-Saharan Africa, carrying the largest prevalence of poverty of any world region. In the fourth piece, Giants of the 21 st Century: population ageing and intergenerational justice, Hoffman (2012) presents the view that intergenerational justice, the mitigation of inequality between the generations, will only be sustained in the future by a dual approach of the mutual distribution of resources and facilitating solidarity between the generations. The final piece turns to consider the giant of the inequality in access to education, and the particular impact this has upon women. This combined collection thus presents five new giants for the 21 st century and considers how the Century's major challenge of demographic change will interact with these-want has been replaced by poverty, disease by lack of access to health care, ignorance by lack of access to education, squalor and idleness by disabled life expectancy and failing intergenerational reciprocity. These five giants of the 21 st century have all had a central theme of inequality-inequality within countries, inequality between regions, and inequalities between generations. The