Why do we give only to women and girls internationally?

Since 75 percent of the world’s 1.3 billion people living in extreme poverty are women and children who live in developing nations, it makes sense that if we are to change the level of poverty worldwide we do it through the empowerment of these women.

Also, 85 percent of money Americans donate to charitable purposes stays in the United States. Of the 15 percent that is donated internationally, private foundations rather than individuals give the majority of funds donated. Here are some startling statistics:

• 70 percent of the world’s 1.3 billion poor are women living on less than $1 a day.
• Women do 60 percent of the world’s work and earn 10 percent of the world’s income.
• Women spend 50-70 percent of time men do on paid work and still do 200 percent of unpaid work in comparison to men.
• Women produce 70-75 percent of the world’s food crops.
• One year of schooling for the mother reduces child mortality by about 10 percent.
• Women cultivate, plow, and harvest more than half of all the food in the world.

As Nicholas Kristof, NY Times Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and co-author of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide states,

"The oppression of women worldwide is the human rights cause of our time. And their liberation could help solve many of the world's problems, from poverty to child mortality to terrorism." 


Sources: United Nations, CIA Fact Sheet, World Bank, Inter Press Service, and The Feminization of Poverty by Richard Robbins.