Tag Archives: women

The Wrong Way to Celebrate International Women’s Day

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Today is International Women’s Day. 2011 marks the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, which was first celebrated in Europe. In 1975, the United Nations began celebrating 8 March as International Women’s Day, and in December 1977, the General Assembly adopted a resolution proclaiming a United Nations Day for Women’s Rights and International Peace to be observed on any day of the year by Member States, in accordance with their historical and national traditions. Most countries have gone with March 8.

This isn’t a day to give women flowers or take them to lunch. It’s a day to remember that women are denied access to education, health care, income generation and life choices at a staggering rate compared to men. It’s a day to remember that women and girls are undervalued all over the world. Millions of girls are not tracked at all by their governments – there are no systems to record their birth, their citizenship, or even their identity. The 2009 World Economic Forum devoted one of its plenary sessions to the impact of educating girls in developing countries for the first time ever, and noted that only half a cent of every international development dollar currently goes toward girls.

A few days ago, word leaked that USAID is removing or watering down specific women’s rights requirements in funding proposals from organizations in Afghanistan. A senior U.S. official said in the Washington Post article, “Gender issues are going to have to take a back seat to other priorities… There’s no way we can be successful if we maintain every special interest and pet project. All those pet rocks in our rucksack were taking us down.”

Women are not pet projects. Women are not pet rocks. 50% of the Afghan population are not a “special interest.”

Let’s be clear: peace and prosperity in Afghanistan is NOT possible, in the short term nor in the long term, without ambitious targets to improve the lives women, and strict requirements by those organizations receiving USAID funding to meet those targets.

USAID’s watering down of women’s rights requirements in funding programs in Afghanistan further entrenches the practice of leaving 50 percent of the population living in deplorable conditions, depriving them of education and participation in even micro enterprises like raising a GOAT. I have worked with many Afghan women, and more than a few gender specialists based in Afghanistan. To a person, they all say the same thing: reforms for women will NOT happen in Afghanistan without sustained, clearly-stated pressure from donors.

    • When a girl in the developing world receives seven or more years of education, she marries four years later and has 2.2 fewer children.
      (United Nations Population Fund, State of World Population 1990.)
    • An extra year of primary school boosts girl’s eventual wages by 10 to 20 percent. An extra year of secondary school: 15 to 25 percent.
      (George Psacharopoulos and Harry Anthony Patrinos, Returns to Investment in Education: A Further Update, Policy Research Working Paper 2881 [Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2002].)
    • Research in developing countries has shown a consistent relationship between better infant and child health and higher levels of schooling among mothers.
      (George T. Bicego and J. Ties Boerma, Maternal Education and Child Survival: A Comparative Study of Survey Data from 17 Countries, Social Science and Medicine 36 (9) [May 1993].)
  • When women and girls earn income, they reinvest 90 percent of it into their families, as compared to only 30 to 40 percent for a man.
    (Phil Borges, with foreword by Madeleine Albright, Women Empowered: Inspiring Change in the Emerging World [New York: Rizzoli, 2007], 13.)

Give a man to fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. Teach a WOMAN to fish, you feed her FAMILY for a lifetime. Teach a woman to fish, and everyone eats.

Empowering Women Everywhere – My Favorite Resources, a list of my favorite resources for information about the empowerment of women and girls. If you are looking to educate yourself on this issue, this is where to start.

Special added bonus: A video by Daniel Craig (007), narrated by Dame Judi Dench (who I met once!). The quotes are about women and men in the UK – but apply most anywhere. Something to think about, not just on today, International Women’s Day. You’ll smile at the image – but will you also think about the statistics you are hearing?

Girls Are More Likely to Support Charities Using Social Media

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A survey commissioned by World Vision, a Christian international relief and development group, says that girls in the USA are more likely than boys in the USA to “friend”, “like” or “follow” causes they believe in on social media (41 percent vs. 27 percent) and that girls are more likely than boys to say they’ve become more aware of the needs of others as a result of their use of social media (51 percent vs. 38 percent). The study also found high overall levels of social media use: Four out of five USA teenagers surveyed said they used social networks like Facebook.

The study was conducted online in January by Harris Interactive among more than 500 youth ages 13 to 17 years old.

According to the survey, nearly 1 in 4 teens (23%) say they volunteer during their free time. How easy would it be to make that percentage even greater? Consider the answers to these questions:

How strongly do you agree or disagree
with each of the following statements?		 Summary of Strongly/ Somewhat Agree (Net)
It is more important than ever to help others who are less fortunate. 90%
I wish I could do more to help those in need. 88%
It is important to support charitable causes or organizations symbolically even if you can’t do so financially. 86%
I have become more aware of the needs of others as a result of the current economic climate. 79%
My family has been negatively affected by the current economic climate. 73%
The benefits of using social media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter) outweigh the risks. 66%
I have become more aware of the needs of others as a result of my use of social media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter). 44%

When you see just how strongly these young people in this study felt about charity, social responsibility and volunteering – something you can see echoed per the questions from teens on YahooAnswers Community Service – you have to wonder why many nonprofits are doing such a lousy job of reaching out to teens and pre-teens as volunteers and participants! If your organization isn’t getting youth involvement at the numbers you want, or should be, it’s time to look at how your organization is using social media.

World Vision sponsored the study to coincide with its annual 30 Hour Famine, scheduled for February 25-26, in which teenagers fast for 30 hours to raise money for global poverty. The event, which raised $10.4-million dollars last year, has set a goal of $11-million for 2011. World Vision expects 200,000 participants.

Advice for nonprofits, NGOs, charities, civil society, government agencies and others looking to use the Internet to mobilize young people as volunteers and program participants:

Nonprofit Organizations and Online Social Networking: Advice and Commentary

Evaluating Online Activities: Online Action Should Create & Support Offline Action

What nonprofit & government agencies “get” FaceBook?

Empower women, empower a nation

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This week, the US State Department released the first-ever Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), which includes an unprecedented emphasis on the central role of women and girls in effective development and diplomacy. The QDDR is the first sweeping assessment and new blueprint for all of U.S. international assistance and diplomacy.

It’s fantastic to see the essential role of women so prominent in a US State Department report. Hurrah!

But it’s not enough.

When a girl in the developing world receives seven or more years of education, she marries four years later and has 2.2 fewer children
(United Nations Population Fund, State of World Population 1990). When women and girls earn income, they reinvest 90 percent of it into their families, as compared to only 30 to 40 percent for a man (Phil Borges, with foreword by Madeleine Albright, Women Empowered: Inspiring Change in the Emerging World [New York: Rizzoli, 2007], 13.). Empowering women in places in Afghanistan — giving them safe, easy access to primary and secondary education, to vocational training and to basic health services — improves the lives of everyone in the country. And, in addition, giving women a voice in defining and evaluating development goals is the ONLY way to ensure development activities meet the needs of women and children.

If you are an aid worker, you have to be committed to women’s involvement, no matter what the focus of your work is. I’m not a gender expert nor a women’s mainstreaming expert, but I have a commitment to mainstreaming the issues of women in my aid and development work. That means that, when I’m working as a reporting consultant, for instance, I’m going to kick back reports to the author’s if there’s no mention of how women were involved in whatever they are reporting about, or no explanation of why women were not involved. I’ve made many a male aid worker angry for doing that… Whether its a water and sanitation project, an infrastucture project, a weapons return program, an agricultural project, a governance project, whatever, you have to look for ways women to be involved in at least the decision-making and goal-defining.

As most of you know, I worked in Afghanistan for six months in 2007, and I’ve remained in contact with a few Afghan women in Afghanistan. They tell me that they cherish every inch of freedom they’ve enjoyed over the last eight years, and though it isn’t nearly as much as they hoped for — they still don’t have, in practice, equal rights to men (property ownership, wages, leadership roles, choice in marriage, choice in career, choice in number of children, etc.). They see on TV the freedoms and prosperity Muslim women enjoy in India, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Indonesia, and other countries with large, even dominant, Muslim populations, and they see the prosperity of Muslims in those countries, and they ask, “Why not us?”

But I rarely see these women on TV news reports. I rarely hear women mentioned in news analysis on network TV, in newspapers, in political debates about Afghanistan, in US Government briefings… that’s like not mentioning black Africans or apartheid when discussing South Africa in the 1980s. If the 50% of the population being oppressed, tortured, killed, denied even basic human rights, were an ethnic group or a religious group, the outrage would be oh-so-loud and constant. But women? Suddenly oppression is a cultural thing we have to respect and not interfere with.

Some things regarding Afghanistan that have gotten my attention lately, and are worth your time to read:

I’ve blogged about this before. I guess I’m going to keep blogging about it until things change…