Improve the World - Empower Women

To all the women that have suffered at the hands of the Taliban and other such organisations for daring to ask for more than being an unrecognised slave - you are bright stars that refuse to die.  The world will remember you, even if we don't know your names.

It has made me think, once again on the state of the world.  Has anybody noticed that the countries that are the poorest in the world tend to be the ones were women are powerless and without educations?  Has anybody considered the fact that there might be a correlation between women who are little more than chattels and poverty?  I believe there is.

For starters - if a women is educated and valued for being a house wife and mother of her husband's children then it is more than likely she will still be happy to stay at home and be the mother of those children.  However, while staying at home as a mother an educated women can educate her children - teaching them how to read and write and do basic arithmetic.  Then, if the family can only afford to send the boys to school, the daughters still gain an education that they can pass on to their children in turn, while the sons go to school with the basics already in place.  Therefore they can begin their formal education at a more advanced stage than their peers who had uneducated mothers, they can advice further in the time that their family can afford to send them to school and when they leave school they will be qualified for a better paying job, therefore helping to lift their family out of poverty.

Also an educated women, if she has any schooling in health care, will know how to keep her family cleaner and therefore less likely to die of disease.  Therefore her children will more likely reach adulthood, meaning that she does not have to risk her health and her life having dozens of children in the hope that one of them will reach adulthood.  That means that the family's resources are not stretch as far trying to feed a dozen mouths, meaning each child can receive more food, further increasing their chances of surviving to adulthood.

It seems to me that the best way of eliminating Third World Debt and improving the lot of our fellow human beings lays with educating their women.