Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation report says women empowerment is the way to go

The lives of people in some of the world's poorest countries will improve faster in the next 15 years than at any other time in history, according to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

And how, you may ask? By investing in women’s health and education. A report released by The Bill Gates and Melinda Gates Foundation on Huffington Post predicts that women empowerment is the way to go, to eradicate poverty. The report infers that a woman of good health, sound education and professional stability will be the driving force behind changing world’s statistics. Here’s how:

Healthy:

Since 1990, maternal deaths worldwide have dropped 45 percent. A healthy woman anchors the well-being of a healthy family- which is the most basic unit in a society, enabling them to contribute towards the prosperity of the community.

Wealthy:

It is obvious that if we capitalize upon the untapped talents of half our world’s population, there will be a gargantuan upward push in the economy. The talent pool and human resource will shoot up, and economically speaking- as women- previously just consumers also become producers, it will lead to higher purchasing power, higher demand, higher sales, higher profits, in turn furthering purchasing power again.

It is predicted that if all women participated equally in the labor force, while India could see an additional 10 percent income per capita by 2020, globally, the GDP would go up by 12 percent.

Women spend 90 percent of their income on things that directly benefit their families. They prioritize things like food, medicine and education for their children, as compared to men just spending 35-40 percent, while using the rest for his personal needs.

Wise:

Mothers who’ve had an education are not only in a better position to seize employment opportunities, but are also are more than TWICE as likely to send their own kids to school as mothers with no education.

Africa has already established the efficacy of this report, where half of the farmers that are women were given the same access to resources that men have – like mobile phones, farming tools and information. What resulted is a 20-30 percent increase in their yields, feeding more people and driving economic growth.

The formula is ready. Its optimal implementation is what remains to be seen.

Original Source: Huffington Post

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