Mother’s Day is Sunday here in the USA, so here’s some stories that have gotten my attention recently about the condition of women and girls in various places:

• The average height of very poor women in some developing countries has shrunk in recent decades, according to a new study by Harvard researchers. “Height is a reliable indicator of childhood nutrition, disease and poverty. Average heights have declined among women in 14 African countries, the study found, and stagnated in 21 more in Africa and South America. That suggests, the authors said, that poor women born in the last two decades, especially in Africa, are worse off than their mothers or grandmothers born after World War II.” More in this article by The New York Times.

• “Women cry when they have girls”: Despite economic growth, Indian families let its girls die. A deep-rooted cultural preference for sons remains in India. Even the government has accepted that it has failed to save millions of little girls. “Whatever measures that have been put in over the last 40 years have not had any impact,” India’s Home Secretary G.K. Pillai said last month.

• Jamie Henry, 24, is enrolled at South Texas College, has two children and gets by on government assistance and a $540 disability check her husband, a veteran of the Marines and National Guard, receives every month. “I have a 7-year-old boy and a 4-month-old girl, and I probably would have had 10 kids in between that if I didn’t come here and get my (contraceptive) shot,” Henry said Tuesday morning as she waited for her appointment at Planned Parenthood’s McAllen clinic. Henry, who gave birth to a baby girl four months ago and does not want any more children in the near future, is the type of woman Planned Parenthood Association of Hidalgo County is fighting to protect from an onslaught of legislative attempts to cut basic family planning services at the state and federal level. Here’s the story from Texas, as well as breakdowns of numbers from Minnesota and New Jersey that explain just how devestating to women – including mothers and mothers-to-be – cuts to Planned Parenthood will be.

Also see: Empowering Women Everywhere – Essential to Development Success, a list of research and articles that confirm that empowering women is essential to development success and highlight the very particular challenges to women’s access to education, health care, safety and economic prosperity.

Tags: moms, women, woman, wives, wife, gender, female, value, worth, funding, MDGs