Making Every Woman Count

How many women die preventable deaths each year? When I first started working on global health and development issues a decade and a half ago, the answer shocked me: "No one knows."

Even today, the world has astoundingly little data about women in the world's poorest places. There are still women who live and die with their lives entirely unrecorded. They leave behind no birth certificate, no death certificate, no information about whether they went to school, had the chance to work outside the home, or whether they were victims of violence. There's no official record of the impact they had on their local economy, the contributions they made to their community, or the ways they shaped the world around them.

Until we have a better understanding of the problems these women face, we aren't going to be able to develop effective solutions to improve their lives. Learn more about how sexist data is holding women back and what we need to do to ensure that every woman counts.