International Women's Day 2007

Commentary by CEDPA President Yolonda C. Richardson.

March 8, 2007—International Women’s Day is the one day that the world has allotted us to commemorate women’s lives.

It is impossible to do justice to the world’s 3.2 billion women in 24 hours, or even the 100 girls who were born in the first minute of March 8.   

These girls enter the world with great promise. Yet, they face wide disparities in health, education and economic opportunity depending on where they are born. At CEDPA, our work is often guided by the question: what can we do to ensure that these girls grow up to reach their fullest potential?

Today we ask, what is the cost of inaction?

Consider the theme for International Women’s Day this year—ending violence against women and girls. The statistics are sobering:

• The latest World Health Organization study reported domestic violence rates ranging from 15 percent in urban Japan to 71 percent in rural Ethiopia. Other studies show one in every three or four women in the United States and Western Europe are abused.

   

• More than 130 million women and girls alive today have been subjected to female genital mutilation, according to UNICEF.

   

• Somewhere between 700,000 and two million women are trafficked each year.

   

• Rape has become a tool of war, and women and girls are targets of retribution between warring parties in places where they are viewed as symbols of community values.

Working with CEDPA in Egypt, Khira spoke out and convinced others not to subject their daughters to FGC.

Why isn’t there more investment in programs to end violence against women? Often, there is lack of understanding about how much countries lose in real economic terms by failing to address these and other gender inequalities.

The UN Millennium Project estimated the price of promoting gender equality and empowering women. For example, a package of programs to fight violence against women and reduce the gender gap in employment in Tajikistan was estimated at a mere $5.2 million in 2005.

When compared to the cost of inaction, it speaks volumes about our global investment choices.

Consider the cost to communities when we fail to act:

• More than half the world's food is produced by rural women. In developing countries, women produce 60 to 80 percent of the food, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. What happens to this food production when women’s lives are lost or disabled?

  CEDPA alumna Hubbie Hussein Al-Haji confronts violence against girls and women in rural Kenya.

• In the United States, the CDC estimates that violence against women costs companies $727.8 million annually due to lost productivity. The estimated health care costs of domestic violence were $4.1 billion in 1995. Who pays for these costs?

   

• Violence against women has magnified the AIDS epidemic. Experts agree that violence increases the vulnerability of girls and women to HIV and fuels its spread. How do you measure the "cost" to the nearly 40 million people living today with HIV and their families? Or, the cost to national health systems and economies?
  

The good news is that there is progress. Women have made gains in the past three decades, particularly in health and education. Overall, girls born today are expected to live longer and are more likely to get a primary school education than their mothers did. But these gains remain uneven.

Together, we can create a world where the 100 girls born in the first minute of International Women’s Day have a better chance of living free from violence than their mothers did.

Learn more about women leaders in peace and stability in the "Women Lead to End Conflict and Build More Responsive Governments" article in the March 2007 issue of Monday Developments.

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