Changing the world, one woman at a time
This Sunday, The New York Times is releasing an issue of its Sunday magazine dedicated solely to discussing the issues surrounding women's rights. The main article, written by tireless women's rights advocates Nick Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, discusses the ways in which making women and girls a priority in aid efforts could spur development and give aid organizations the best 'bang for the buck.' Before they delve deeply into that point, they begin the article by outlining some heartbreaking truths about the condition of a majority of the world's women:
Another huge burden for women in poor countries is maternal mortality, with one woman dying in childbirth around the world every minute. In the West African country Niger, a woman stands a one-in-seven chance of dying in childbirth at some point in her life. (These statistics are all somewhat dubious, because maternal mortality isn't considered significant enough to require good data collection.) For all of India's shiny new high-rises, a woman there still has a 1-in-70 lifetime chance of dying in childbirth. In contrast, the lifetime risk in the United States is 1 in 4,800; in Ireland, it is 1 in 47,600. The reason for the gap is not that we don't know how to save lives of women in poor countries. It's simply that poor, uneducated women in Africa and Asia have never been a priority either in their own countries or to donor nations.
These stories are told not just to raise sympathy in the reader, but as a convincing argument; the stories provide evidence to suggest that development in the country can be furthered through aid efforts directed at women:
In many poor countries, the greatest unexploited resource isn't oil fields or veins of gold; it is the women and girls who aren't educated and never become a major presence in the formal economy. With education and with help starting businesses, impoverished women can earn money and support their countries as well as their families. They represent perhaps the best hope for fighting global poverty...Why do microfinance organizations usually focus their assistance on women? And why does everyone benefit when women enter the work force and bring home regular pay checks? One reason involves the dirty little secret of global poverty: some of the most wretched suffering is caused not just by low incomes but also by unwise spending by the poor -- especially by men. Surprisingly frequently, we've come across a mother mourning a child who has just died of malaria for want of a $5 mosquito bed net; the mother says that the family couldn't afford a bed net and she means it, but then we find the father at a nearby bar. He goes three evenings a week to the bar, spending $5 each week...
A series of studies has found that when women hold assets or gain incomes, family money is more likely to be spent on nutrition, medicine and housing, and consequently children are healthier.
Convinced by their arguments? Kristof and WuDunn also provide a way with which the reader can become a direct source for foreign aid, advocating for change in an issue that resonates most with them.