By Tamara Woodbury

 

Girls are the most hopeful solution to growing social and economic challenges throughout the world. Girls and women accomplish nearly 70 percent of the human work efforts that not only sustain families, our civil societies as well as our economies. Unleashing the potential of girls is the pathway to shifting the patterns of inequality and incivility in virtually every community around the globe not just those in developing countries. Research is clear that in societies where women and girls are oppressed and underutilized the economy also suffers. This makes girls the most powerful and underutilized resource available to humankind.  

Last summer, one New York Times article captured both the various facets and importance of investing in girls. The Women’s Crusade by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn is actually several stories within a story. Staggering statistics of genocide based on gender. Profiles of individual girls and women who overcame abuse, poverty, lack of education, societal stigma—enormous odds—then improved their own lives and lives of those around them. 

 

The Girl Effect is a movement that began several years ago to illustrate the magnified return on investment when girls are educated and supported to take their place as leaders in society. I encourage you to watch this video, which parallels two lives: the first, a girl who lives in poverty, following in the footsteps of generations of women before her; the second illustrates the life of an educated girl, investing her earnings in a cow to feed her family, expanding the herd, and sharing the profits with her community members, who are able to learn and follow her example. The exponential effect, over time, can change (save) the world.

 

In a separate but related blog, Kristof announced the Half the Sky Competition, soliciting stories from readers who have had an experience of needs of girls and women in countries around the world. Also invited were solutions – simple actions that build on the capacities of women and girls in their communities. In the multitude of responses, there was one that said, “I live in a Third World country. You know it as Detroit.” The author, Frances Saad, goes on to discuss the plight of the impoverished in the United States of America and question why it seems less in vogue to recognize and address poverty here, rather than in countries that are readily accepted as “third world.” Her question is timely. This is why some of us have gathered to bring voice, attention and organization to a movement called The Girl Effect USA.

 

While the illustration of the original Girl Effect video, set in a third world country, is perfectly clear, it is much more difficult to see The Girl Effect in a wealthy nation like the USA. Few American girls will begin their gainful employment raising cows.  Yet, millions of American girls are oppressed in myriad ways, from situations of abuse and the trafficking of them for sexual exploitation to being socialized to believe their value is largely set their sights low and see their value focused on how they look – their beauty, rather than who they are and what they can accomplish. The Girl Effect USA proposes that the erosion of civil society in the USA must be addressed and that girls are the solution here, too.  

 

The power of women and girls is ancient and universal, and we can no longer afford to squander the potential of their full contribution to the health and well being of our families, communities and economies.