If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
For six months I traveled through Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia and Nepal. I was curious about what it was like to be a woman in all of these places. I began to realize how deeply rooted these gender issues are.
Lack of investment in girl's education shortchanges girls, their families, their communities, their country, and indeed, our world.
Speaking with different Latinos, I've heard countless times: We are no longer bowing our heads to el patrón, in a submissive, ¡sà señor! position. Our time is now.
Men and women do talk, and think, about sex differently -- as they do about plenty of other subjects. The problem is that those differences nearly always skew toward the male POV when we package mass-market media products such as 22-minute TV shows.
Today, millions of girls around the world are denied the privilege of even a basic education because they are too poor, because it is not safe, because we have not invested enough in the power of the girl.
While Sheryl Sandberg in her book Lean In insists it's up to women to help themselves, men and organizations also need to "lean in" and reframe their thinking about women in leadership positions.
One meaningful encounter with a woman called Rispa can explain it all. She, like hundreds of other women, was trapped in a life of poverty and hardship by the country's social norms, which neglect women and ignore their potential.
We've halved the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day, increased school enrollment and increased access to lifesaving HIV/AIDS treatment worldwide. Yet the goal of achieving universal access to reproductive health (MDG 5a) has seen the smallest amount of progress.
It used to seem futile to me to keep someone alive when they couldn't respond and had no hope of recovery. But that someone had never been my mother.
An analysis of available data on a country-by-country basis suggests that a majority of the women with unmet need for family planning are in the world's middle income countries.
The next wave of the women's movement is about to break. Across the public sphere, women are awakening, becoming reenergized, taking stock and speaking up. Nowhere was this more apparent than at the inaugural YaleWomen Global Conference: Vision, Values, Voices.
In the red light area, children's access to mainstream education, health and protection services are often blocked due to stigma.
Indego Africa's market access program integrates women artisans into global commerce and the global economy almost immediately.
The question we are often asked about our project is "Why a comic book?" We hope that approaching the problem in this more open-ended way will lead to discussions of the deeper issues at play.
As we struggle to bring a change, we find -- individually and collectively -- no one can really do it for us. We, as empowered Hindus, have to bring the social change within our own communities.
Nearly 20 years after 179 nations committed to protect the reproductive health and rights of women and girls at the UN International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, we have the chance to ask, "Has life really changed for women and girls?" The answer is decidedly mixed.
