How Women Will Change The World

This article was originally published in ODE Magazine.

The 1994 genocide in Rwanda left the country in tatters, its future fraught with uncertainty. Of the more than 800,000 people killed, most were men and boys. Rwanda's remaining population was 70 percent female. Fast-forward to the present day: The economy has revived and is holding steady. Major road arteries between cities and outlying villages, which were destroyed, have been rebuilt. Today, the Rwandan lower house of Parliament is nearly half female, the highest percentage of women in any parliament worldwide. Girls are attending school in record numbers.

The women of Rwanda are behind one of the most inspiring comeback stories of national transformation in recent history. And while their story is dramatic, it's not unique. Indeed, in the field of international development, women have emerged as the not-so-secret secret to changing the world.

As former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said, "If there is one lesson we in the United Nations have learned over the years, it is that investing in women is the most productive strategy a country can pursue"--to raise economic productivity, improve nutrition and health, and educate the next generation.

When economist Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his innovative work in microcredit lending, he made it clear that it was women who make up the bulk of the poor but ambitious small business owners lifting their communities out of poverty with their entrepreneurialism. What many people don't realize is women are behind many of the primary drivers of social change.

In the U.S., for example, women earn 78 cents to a man's dollar, which may lead you to think they give less to charity. Think again. In fact, women control over half the total wealth in America, and give just as much as men to charity. Unlike men, however, they're more willing to take risks on smaller or new organizations they believe have a strong vision for change. Studies show women volunteer more than men, and since the 1960s have turned out in greater numbers at the voting booth. In other words, women are the single most important market opportunity for changing the world.

Unfortunately, their potential has yet to be fully tapped. Professionals in the social-change sector, including advocacy groups, humanitarian organizations and philanthropists, haven't always been thoughtful about targeting women as partners. But if more of them did appeal to women, what would it look like? For starters, it would involve invoking the values that matter most to them. Research from sociological studies to the latest in brain science show that above all, women value connection and community. For women, it's not about "me," it's about "we." That means women are less concerned about the pecking order and more committed to keeping harmony in the coop.

At the dawn of the 21st century, the greatest social and environmental challenges that confront us make these values a winning blueprint for transformation. Both globalization and climate change have already made national borders more tenuous. If the reigning ethos of our history as a species has been "survival of the fittest," the temperature of today's planet requires a paradigm shift to "survival of the connected." Women can lead the way.

You don't have to be an international diplomat to take this new ethos to heart. An important first step is to ditch the niche. That is, banish the notion that women are a peripheral audience and place them squarely in the centre, where they belong. Next, engage women by speaking directly to their values and encouraging their active participation. With women on your side, you'll both build a community and catalyze the change you want to see in the world.

Lisa Witter is the chief operating officer and Lisa Chen a senior vice president at Fenton Communications, a U.S. public interest media relations firm. They are the co-authors of The She Spot: Why Women Are the Market for Changing the World--and How to Reach Them, which will be published by Berrett-Koehler in June

Comments

[vorpalmusic]

A lot of people here are commenting about how much better the world will be when women are permitted to run everything. I just want to remind everyone that Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro are both women, even though they don't much look like it.

[hippynanainblingland]

Nobody's saying that ALL women are righteous, to be trusted. Like all groups, we women have our share of untrusworthy people, "manly girls," who'd rather live for their own power gathering, rather than the good of the whole. There's trustworthy men out there too, those are the ones who we'd rather keep around to sire and father the next generation of boys, and to work alongside us for the betterment of humanity.

And yes, probably we might end up with a family system in which one man is the husband of many women. The only difference is that these families would exist by choice, with everybody's informed consent, and equal power sharing.

[vorpalmusic]

Bring in female world domination!

[vorpalmusic]

On!* Bring on!*

[westcoastsc]

Educating women is the surest way of a country to get out of poverty. They find more ways to provide for their family and also take part in the education of their children. When we went to Iraq and Afganistan we should have made it the number one American priority to elevate women's rights for our being there. It would have been the best way to encourage a beneficial change in their societies economically, democratically, and socially. Defending women's rights would have been a wonderful strategy to deflect the United States from being viewed as much of an imperialist as we do seem; it would have expressed our values, presented us as liberators, and would have exposed the biggest weakness, the lynchpin, for the world to see of the fundamentalist Islamic movements. By supporting women we would already have half the population on our side, and it would affect lasting change in the region because we all know that once women have a taste of freedom, they cannot go back and neither can their society. The men who would fight against giving women's rights would eventually be ridiculed and would divide the most dangerous elements of fundamentalism from the rest of the nation. Women's rights must be protected and violators of women must be punished and forced to sign an oath of solidarity with women before being released.

[mamacat]

An encouraging blog. I hope they also are taking control of their bodies. If we do nothing, the world may be uninhabitable in another century or two, due to overpopulation.

[vandegrasse]

Saw a beautiful video on the birqa and Arab women. Very cool!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Xm_9S8DdrYI

[LordMoon]

Forty Million Abortions later.

And several millions of cases of child abus annually, over 80% of them in which the mother is the perpetrator.

There is little difference between men and women when it comes right down to it. Both seem to excuse their killing with ideology, that makes it seem ok.

[rini]

If your point is that men and women both commit violent acts...then agreed. Neither sex is perfect.

However, if you think that an abortion, even an extremely early one, is exactly the same as killing a child, infant or adult, then you are an idealogue as well. I do not think abortion is a great thing. However, it bothers me that desperately need family planning aide in the third world is taken away by the anti-abortion activists.

[hippynanainblingland]

It's just as I've always thought. If some force or nature (and is not war a force of nature? testosterone nature?) eliminated at least 70% of males, life would improve dramatically for the rest of us. Peace.

[SeaBlood]

what are the women going to do after 70% of their slaves are eliminated ? Who will kill all the spiders for them ? The women will probably wind up in the harems of the remaining 25% of the men.

[hippynanainblingland]

Yeah, just like the women in Rwanda... NOT!!! Wishful thinking, is all this is!

BTW, I like spiders, just not in my living space. When I see one scurrying across my bed, I promptly kill it, myself.

And for the record, men are not women's slaves. Else why are most positions of power held by men? And why do men make more than women in the same positions?

[Kilantra]

'someday women will be at the helm of society and men will be
it's oars'

[GOP4MoreTears]

When the religious zealotry of the G-d of Abraham religions are removed women's civil rights will improve dramatically.

[wndrwrthg]

I think the hope for the future is people, whether male or female. Given human nature I also think that as women gain power you will find that they are as suseptable to the dark side of it as are men.

[SeaBlood]

So, if women in third world countries get an education, those countries will become as advanced and civilized as ours? What good is that? Women in the usa have the vote for almost 100 years ; they outnumber male voters; they have access to contraceptives ; they have access to higher education. Yet they still say that they are not empowered and , some day, they will become empowered and everything will be perfect. The clock is ticking---and I don't mean your fertility clock.

[rini]

Life in our country is better than that in many third world countries. Hopefully, we will learn to conserve resources a little better and develop more cohesive social network, but otherwise, I really prefer our life...even if it isn't perfect. Perfection is not the goal, improvement is.

[rini]

If women have power, not only will the world be better for their leadership, but the problem of overpopulation will be reduced.

All the family planning knowledge in the world doesn't help a woman if she is not empowered and has no option but to be a baby machine. If she can take part in family decision making, and even community decision making and has some life and education outside the family, then she might have more options and make different decisions.