Economic Meltdown & Women

African women face many constraints and discrimination which affect them economically. Though women with economic power tend to make positive choices for their families and communities, too often they are deprived of the opportunity.

This blog post is a response to the post “Invest in women — it pays!”

I just stumbled upon a very interesting debate on The Economix Blog, a blog by The New York Times. In a time where global experts and scholars seem to disagree about the victims and the spoilers of the financial crisis, I find this piece very thought-provoking.

Around 35 million people are employed through India’s textile industry, the majority of the lower tiers being women. Millions of workers are now facing a dramatic drop in wages forcing them below the poverty line.

The World Bank its taking a closer look at the relationship between maternal health and economic progress.  A must-read feature:
Reducing maternal mortality by three quarters, and achieving universal access to reproductive health services is one of the Millennium Development Goals the international community set to achieve by 2015 to improve the lives of poor people. [...]

In these turbulent times of financial crisis, rising food prices, climate change and political instability, it is women and girls who will be disproportionately affected, particularly poor women in poor countries. It is girls who will be removed from school because families can no longer afford to pay for them; it is women who [...]

At the moment the world loses 15 billion dollars every year in productivity that doesn’t happen because mothers and their newborns are dying – one mother a minute, four million newborns every year. A mother’s death always means deeper poverty and hardship for her family and community. It often means an early death for her [...]

Women and children do bear the brunt of economic hardship during any economic downturn. I witnessed this during the course of  2007 and 2008 when I made several trips to Ghana to photographically document a microfinance operation in Pokuase, a small town approximately one hour outside the capital of Accra. Because poverty in the third [...]

One of the people who helps me understand the impact of the economic crisis on women is Graca Machel, the passionate advocate for women and children and a former Minister of Education and Culture in Mozambique.  She knows what it’s like for African households to go hungry; she understands the struggle of African women to [...]

Investing in Women is a Smart Choice
We echo the words of the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on the Observance of World Population Day: In the midst of the worst global economic crisis in generations, we must find the most effective ways to continue progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals. There is no [...]

Who’s responsible for globalization? Probably a woman called Ug. Ug recognised that the woman in the next cave made better mammoth-skin shoes than she did. She also knew that Mr. Ug threw a pretty hot spear, which meant she had more mammoth skin to work with. So the first trade was made…