Why invest in women?

Why do so many non-profit ventures focus on girls and women as the primary agents of change?   

• Firstly, women and girls represent roughly half of the world’s population.
• Secondly, women are the most marginalized, the most dominated and exploited, and without outside influence often doomed by cultural mores to remain subordinated. Those with no voice are often overlooked, and rarely given voice or power.
• Girls across the globe do not enjoy basic human rights: freedom from violence, to education, to inherit or own land, to decide when and whether to marry or bear children, or, the right to self-determination.
• One in three women around the globe will be beaten, raped, or otherwise abused in her lifetime. The daily threat of violence is both a cause and a consequence of a world greatly out of balance.
• Many argue that the most undervalued and untapped forces on the planet are adolescent girls living in poverty.
• And girls are the mothers of the next generation, and the quality of these girls’ lives will literally determine the course of their children’s lives and our collective future.