The Women's CrusadeNicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, NYT: In the 19th century, the paramount moral challenge was slavery. In the 20th century, it was totalitarianism. In this century, it is the brutality inflicted on so many women and girls around the globe: sex trafficking, acid attacks, bride burnings and mass rape.
Yet if the injustices that women in poor countries suffer are of paramount importance, in an economic and geopolitical sense the opportunity they represent is even greater... The world is awakening to a powerful truth: Women and girls aren't the problem; they're the solution...
The global statistics on the abuse of girls are numbing. It appears that more girls and women are now missing from the planet, precisely because they are female, than men were killed on the battlefield in all the wars of the 20th century. The number of victims of this routine 'gendercide' far exceeds the number of people who were slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20th century. For those women who life, mistreatment is sometimes shockingly brutal... In the developing world, meanwhile, millions of women and girls are actually enslaved... Another huge burden for women in poor countries is maternal mortality, with one woman dying in childbirth around the world every minute...
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?... Some of the most wretched suffering is caused not just by low incomes but also by unwise spending by the poor -- especially by men... 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.
Bill Gates recalls once being invited to speak in Saudi Arabia and finding himself facing a segregated audience. Four-fifths of the listeners were men, on the left. The remaining one-fifth were women, all covered in black cloaks and veils, on the right. A partition separated the two groups. Toward the end, in the question-and-answer session, a member of the audience noted that Saudi Arabia aimed to be one of the Top 10 countries in the world in technology by 2010 and asked if that was realistic. 'Well, if you're not fully utilizing half the talent in the country,' Gates said, 'you're not going to get too close to the Top 10.' The small group on the right erupted in wild cheering...
Yet another reason to educate and empower women is that greater female involvement in society and the economy appears to undermine extremism and terrorism. It has long been known that a risk factor for turbulence and violence is the share of a country's population made up of young people. Now it is emerging that male domination of society is a risk factor;... when women are marginalized the nation takes on the testosterone-laden culture of a military camp or a high-school boys' locker room.
Image: Saima Muhammad, shown with her daughter Javaria (seated), lives near Lahore, Pakistan. She was routinely beaten by her husband until she started a successful embroidery business. Katy Grannan for the New York Times.
