Gender Equality Archives – Page 2 of 3

Kuwaiti Women: Forging Forward in Public Life

Kuwaiti women: quick, what image comes to mind?

Truthfully, it’s a mixed picture. According to the 2017 Global Gender Gap Report, Kuwait ranks 129, of 144 countries, on gender parity overall. Having said that, however, 50 percent of Kuwaiti women are in the labor force. They have higher levels of educational enrollment than Kuwaiti men, have access to financial services and bank accounts, although at lower rates than men. They marry in their 20’s, have their first child at 30, and on average live the same number of years as Kuwaiti men.

One area where Kuwaiti women are not represented is in elected office. Having won the right to vote in 2005, Kuwaiti women voted for the first time in 2006. Four women won seats in the Kuwait Parliament in 2009 (out of 65 members), but currently, there is only one women serving in the Parliament.

In April, I worked with a group of exceptional Kuwaiti women interested in expanding their participation in public life, whether that means running for political office, supporting other women’s campaigns, leading in civil society and business, or working to address legal issues that impact women’s ability to fully participate in society, such as gender-based violence.

They were in the U.S. for two weeks, and visited Washington, DC, Annapolis, Maryland, and Dearborn, Michigan. They met with leaders from a cross section of institutions and communities: the federal government, Congress; state and local government; the judiciary; non-governmental organizations; experts in political leadership and campaigns; and academics. They met men and women, Arab Americans and not, elected and appointed officials, and those seeking political office. They got to see American political fundraising upfront and personal by attending a large DC gala dinner, supporting women candidates in the upcoming election cycle.

Of course, the reason behind such a visit is exposure to American people, places and viewpoints. These experiences gave these women a sense of what has worked here and why and what hasn’t, so they can think about what might work in their context when they return home and strategize about their way forward. As always, it is interesting to me to see our institutions and our democracy through their eyes.

They grappled with existential issues, such as what it means to be an Arab American, and the tension between assimilation and integration. Meeting with young elected officials, they were taken by how those officials balanced their own values and views with respect for others in their family and community who may not hold the same views.

SDG Five, Target Three

Within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), or Global Goals, Goal 5 is to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. For Goal 5, there are nine targets. In this, we will focus on SDG5 Target 3: Eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation.

Unfortunately, data on these critical issues is not regularly collected in the United States. While we believe that less than 5 percent of girls in the United States are married before the age of 16 and that female genital mutilation is rare or limited to ethnic minority enclaves, we do not know for sure.

Early, Forced and Child Marriage: At the federal level, there is no law against child, early and forced marriage because laws on the age of marriage in the United States are set at the state level. Twenty-seven states have no minimum age for marriage; four states allow girls as young as 13 or 14 years old to marry; and in many states, 16 and 17 year olds can marry with parental consent alone. According to data compiled by Unchained At Last, at least 207,468 minors married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2015. This likely does not reflect the breadth of the issue because ten states provided no or incomplete statistics. A few other nuances:

Eight-seven percent of the minors who married across the country between 2000 and 2015 were girls, with the majority aged either 16 or 17.
More than 1,000 children aged 14 or under were granted marriage licences. (Source)

There have been some advocacy campaigns to set or increase the age of marriage at the state level to match the age of consent for sex. However, in 2017, the Governor of New Jersey rejected legislation that would have banned marriage before age 18, without exceptions. “An exclusion without exceptions would violate the cultures and traditions of some communities in New Jersey based on religious traditions,” the Republican governor wrote. (Source)

Globally, one third of girls in the developing world are married before the age of 18 and one in nine are married before the age of 15. In 2012, 70 million women aged 20-24 had been married before the age of 18. If present trends continue, in the next ten years, 150 million girls will be married before their 18th birthday. While countries with the highest prevalence of child marriage are concentrated in Western and Sub-Saharan Africa, due to population size, the largest number of child brides reside in South Asia. (Source)

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM): A federal law making it illegal to perform FGM was passed in 1996, and was amended in 2013 to make it illegal to knowingly transport a girl out of the U.S. to inflict FGM abroad. Since 1990, the estimated number of girls and women in the U.S. who have undergone or are at risk of the practice has more than tripled. This increase is due to rapid growth in the number of immigrants from countries where FGM is a common practice. These girls and women are concentrated in California, New York and Minnesota. Though at-risk girls and women are thought to live in every state but Hawaii, only 25 states have enacted laws against FGM. Prosecution under these laws depends on the age of the victim; who performed the procedure; whether the victim was taken out of the country for FGM; and, whether the accused uses cultural reasons as a defense. Punishments include as much as 30 years in prison and fines that reach $250,000. The first prosecution in the U.S. did not occur until 2017 when two Michigan doctors and the wife of one of the doctors were charged with performing the banned procedure on two 7-year-old girls. (Source) There has been some discussion about more formal data collection about the incidence of FGM in the U.S. with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

Globally, an estimated 200 million girls and women alive today have undergone FGM in the countries where the practice is concentrated. Furthermore, there are an estimated 3 million girls at risk of undergoing female genital mutilation every year. The practice has been documented in 30 countries, mainly in Africa, as well as in the Middle East and Asia. Some forms of FGM have also been reported in other countries, including among certain ethnic groups in South America. (Source)

SDG Five, Target Two

Within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), or Global Goals, Goal 5 is to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. For Goal 5, there are nine targets. In this blog, we will focus on SDG5 Target 2: Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation.

Violence against women and girls is a reality in the United States and in every country around the world. According to the World Health Organization, global estimates indicate that about 1 in 3 (35%) women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime. Most is intimate partner violence. Moreover, globally, as many as 38 percent of women who are murdered are killed by a male intimate partner. Other kinds of violence are also widespread. UNICEF found that around 120 million girls worldwide (slightly more than 1 in 10) have experienced forced intercourse or other forced sexual acts at some point in their lives. Also according to UNICEF, 21 million people are victims of human trafficking. 79 percent of human trafficking is sexual exploitation and women and girls are the predominant victims of this crime.

According to OECD data on violence against women, the United States ranks 13th in the world in terms of these crimes, and statistics are similar to global data. One in three women have been victims of some form of physical violence by an intimate partner within her lifetime, and one in five women has been raped in her lifetime. From 2009-2013, Child Protective Services agencies substantiated, or found strong evidence to indicate that, 63,000 children a year were victims of sexual abuse. 72 percent of all murder-suicides involve an intimate partner; 94 percent of the victims of these murder suicides are female. (Source) According to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center last year show that more than 4,000 cases of sex trafficking were reported in the U.S. In a 2015 survey, one in three women between the ages of 18-34 has been sexually harassed at work. (Source) Among U.S. female internet users aged 18-24, 26 percent have been stalked online and 25 percent have been sexually harassed. (Source)

Moreover, as the recent #MeToo movement has shown, sexual harassment and even assault, is prevalent in workplaces across the country. An October 2017 ABC News/Washington Post poll found that more than half of all American women (54%) have experienced “unwanted and inappropriate sexual advances” at some point in their lives. Thirty percent of women have endured such behavior from male colleagues and 25 percent identified men with sway over their careers as the culprits. This translates to about 33 million U.S. women being sexually harassed, and 14 million sexually abused, in work-related incidents.

These are sobering statistics, so what has the U.S. government done to eliminate gender-based violence in the U.S. and what current efforts exist?

The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) (1994) is a critical tool that created a framework to improve criminal justice and community-based responses to domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and stalking. VAWA has provided $1.6 billion toward investigation and prosecution of violent crimes against women, imposed automatic and mandatory restitution on those convicted, and allowed civil redress in cases prosecutors chose to leave unprosecuted. The Act also established the Office on Violence Against Women within the Department of Justice; that position is currently vacant. VAWA was reauthorized, and some of its provisions expanded, by Congress in 2000, 2005 and 2013.

VAWA has made a difference. Since 1993, domestic violence rates declined 64 percent. And the rate of women being murdered men in single victim/single offender situations — often characteristic of intimate partner violence — dropped by 26 percent over a similar time period, between 1996 and 2012. One study attributed the decline partly to VAWA, which “has been an important impetus for funding in the area of civil legal assistance.” (cut and pasted, needs to be edited) (Source)

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000 was the first comprehensive federal law to address trafficking in persons. The law provides a three-pronged approach that includes prevention, protection, and prosecution. The TVPA was reauthorized through the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) of 2003, 2005, 2008, and 2013. There were 4,460 cases of human trafficking reported in 2017 as of June 30. This number is down after a spike in cases reported in 2016 (7,621) of which 84 percent of the victims were female. (Source)

In comparison with other countries around the world, the U.S. domestic violence laws are comprehensive, yet cultural barriers regularly keep women from reporting rape; and human trafficking is illegal but there are enforcement lapses. And while the Obama administration, particularly former Vice President Biden, worked to increase the reporting and response to sexual assault on college campuses, the policy was rescinded and new guidelines were released in the fall of 2017. There are serious concerns that the new rules will weaken sexual violence protections in higher education settings.

As women across the U.S. and across the globe talk more openly about what they have experienced in terms of violence, assault and harassment, it is vitally important that the legal framework — and more importantly the legal system — keeps up. #MeToo and #TimesUp aren’t just about uncovering what happened in the past and making things right, but creating systems, laws and enforcement mechanisms to stop it in the future.

Smart Cities Must Reflect Women’s Transportation Needs

Today, 55 percent of the world’s population lives in urban areas, and by 2050, that number is projected to increase to 66 percent. At least half are women and girls. This movement of people — largely in Africa and Asia – is transforming our cities and should transform our thinking about how infrastructure meets everyone’s needs.

As the number of urban dwellers increases, mayors and other city officials are focusing on designing “smart cities,” where plans and services are based on data that reflects citizen needs, provides a strong foundation for economic growth, allows for more efficient management of city assets, and minimizes environmental impact. These officials are also examining how “equitable innovation” can help ensure that city services meet everyone’s needs, no matter who they are, what neighborhood they live in, or what they do.

This presents an unprecedented opportunity for greater gender equality if urban design and the provision of public services are more responsive to, and reflective of, the needs of women and girls. We rely on infrastructure — roads, street lighting, public transportation, technology, public spaces and parks — as a foundation for economic and social development but often don’t think about how men and women use it differently.

Everyone needs to get to and from work, school, the store, and the doctor. Women more often use public transportation than men. And, women and men use transportation differently because social roles and gender norms drive the contours of a woman’s daily life. She may work outside of the downtown business center, and she has more family responsibilities, such as child care, running household errands, and maintaining family and community ties. These tasks all determine where a woman goes every day.

Unlike men who usually travel to and from work, and then home, women often “chain” their activities together by combining multiple stops and destinations within a single, longer trip because of their multifaceted household and domestic responsibilities. Traveling to multiple destinations makes public transportation costlier, since the traveller may have to pay for numerous single-fare, one-way tickets throughout a “chained” trip. If women are traveling with children, elderly parents, or groceries, there are additional challenges if buses aren’t on time or aren’t easy to use. Finally, routes outside central commuter corridors may have regular service during off-peak hours, when women are most likely to need public transport for caregiving or to see friends and family.

Think about it – as women juggle work, family care and household responsibilities, the purpose, frequency, and distance of trips differ. Women may take the bus or train to work, and along the way drop their children off at school, which is outside the central business district; similarly, on the way home, they may pick their children up, go grocery shopping closer to their home and check in on an older relative in a different part of town.

At the same time, we know that women and girls experience more violence in public spaces than men and boys do – whether that is street harassment or sexual assault. In Mexico City, 64 percent of women reported having been groped or physically harassed while using public transit. In New York’s subway system, 63 percent of women surveyed reported sexual harassment and 10 percent sexual assault. As a result of unsafe transportation, women tend to change their behavior and often reduce how many trips they make. Transport insecurity reduces household income, as women are limited from access to their full educational and employment opportunities.

Let’s look at what has worked to make public transportation more responsive to the needs of women:

Recognize that infrastructure and city design aren’t gender neutral: As a graduate of a city planning program, I can attest to the ethos in the planning and architecture fields that design is gender neutral. It isn’t. Planners need to shift their perspectives and understand that every decision that gets made has a differential impact on women and men.

Involve everyone, including women and girls, in transportation planning: It’s important to involve everyone – women and girls, boys and men – in the decisions that impact their daily lives. Planners shouldn’t make decisions about transportation routes, the hours they run, without hearing from a broad cross-section of the community. As a corollary, planners need to take the input and concern of women and girls seriously, since they are the ones who have lived the experience of using public transportation. Tools for this type of input include household surveys and focus groups. Planners shouldn’t make assumptions; for example, studies in the UK reflect that women prefer more police on transport to address safety, while men prefer closed circuit TV.

Address issues of both actual concern and perceived concern: Perceived threats can impact the way women make decisions about transport use, and as result can have an impact on the jobs they take or the tasks they do at certain times of the day. For example, to address safety concerns in Quito, Ecuador, 43 out of 44 trolley stops have been remodeled with new safety criteria, including the construction of transparent glass corridors that provide secure transfer and waiting areas.

Conduct a safety audit: UN Women has created templates for safety audits, with a series of questions to ask around transportation issues. These include questions about lighting (where it is located and whether it is working), signage, the availability of footpaths, the level of maintenance, visible police presence and the ability to reach someone in an emergency.

Equitable access to public transport is about making the transport system work for everyone – regardless of gender – and meeting needs for safe, efficient, sustainable mobility. These are critical investments to ensure that the smart cities being designed are truly inclusive.

SDG Five, Target One

Within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), or Global Goals, Goal 5 is a stand alone goal focused on achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls. There are nine targets for Goal 5.

Here, we will focus on SDG5, Target 1: End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere.

It is important to examine the U.S. legal framework that the U.S. to achieve gender parity, as well as the gaps that exist in that framework. While the U.S. does have both federal and state laws and policies to address discrimination based on sex or gender, there is not a comprehensive or constitutional framework for gender equality.

The first gap is that the U.S. is not a party to CEDAW, The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women which is often described as an international bill of rights for women, and was adopted in 1979 by the UN General Assembly. CEDAW has been ratified by 189 states. There are only six other UN member states that have not ratified CEDAW: Iran, Palau, Somalia, Sudan, Togo and the Vatican.

President Jimmy Carter signed CEDAW in 1980, but despite numerous advocacy campaigns, the U.S. Senate has not yet ratified CEDAW. When ratifying the Convention, countries commit to undertake a series of measures to end discrimination against women in all forms. CEDAW is the only human rights treaty which affirms the reproductive rights of women, and targets culture and tradition as influential forces shaping gender roles and family relations. Countries that have ratified or acceded to the Convention are committed to submit national reports, at least every four years, on measures they have taken to comply with their treaty obligations.

Further, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution has not been ratified. The ERA would ensure that rights guaranteed by the Constitution apply equally to everyone, regardless of their sex. After the 19th Amendment affirming women’s right to vote was ratified in 1920, suffragist leader Alice Paul introduced the ERA in 1923. In 1972, the ERA was passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification. The original seven-year time limit was extended by Congress to June 30, 1982, but at that deadline, the ERA had been ratified by only 35 states, three states short of the 38 required to amend the Constitution. The ERA has been re-introduced in every Congress since the deadline.

Another framework for the U.S. to consider is an overarching national plan to advance gender equality. Such a plan would provide guidance to help the government, in conjunction with non-governmental organizations, strategically work towards greater equality. The U.S. government already has several gender oriented action plans, such as the National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security, which outlines how U.S. foreign assistance programs will help other countries increase women’s leadership, and the Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Gender-Based Violence. What’s needed is a concerted effort to knit these strategies together with other strategies and plans to advance the empowerment of women and girls, so that work is driven toward one set of goals.

This would complement the many, individual pieces of legislation focused on ending discrimination against women in the U.S.

The Equal Pay Act (1963) made it illegal for employers to pay men more than women performing the same job.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (1964) prohibits discrimination in employment on the basis of race, color, sex, or ethnic origin.
The Fair Housing Act (FHA) (1968) prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on sex among other characteristics.
Title IX of the Education Amendments Act (1972) prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded education programs.
The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) (1974) guarantees an equal opportunity to obtain credit and prohibits creditors from discriminating against credit applicants on the basis of sex among other characteristics.
The Pregnancy Discrimination Act (1978) prohibits employment discrimination against female workers who are (or intend to become) pregnant, including discrimination in hiring, failure to promote, and wrongful termination.
The Affordable Care Act (2010) stopped the discriminated by insurance companies against women in coverage and cost, however, that provision, among others, may be repealed.

Looking at the big picture, these laws in the U.S. are a patchwork and gaps, such as with political representation, remain.

Overall, the United States ranks 49th out of 144 countries with regard to the gender-based gaps that exist in access to economic resources and opportunities, according to the 2017 World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap report. There are ongoing advocacy efforts to have the U.S. ratify CEDAW and pass the ERA and send it back to the states for ratification.

SDG Targets

In 2016, countries agreed to seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including ones focused on ending poverty, and addressing hunger, education gaps, clean water, economic growth, and climate change. (Link to full list of goals) In order to measure progress towards meeting the 17 goals, there are 169 overall targets. .

Goal 5 is a stand alone goal focused on achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls. Goal 5 has nine targets, spanning the need to end discrimination against women and girls and gender-based violence, to ensure equal access to education, and equal participation in public and economic life. Specifically, the targets ask us collectively to:

End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere;
Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation;
Eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation;
Recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate;
Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life;
Ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights as agreed in accordance with the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing Platform for Action and the outcome documents of their review conferences;
Undertake reforms to give women equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to ownership and control over land and other forms of property, financial services, inheritance and natural resources, in accordance with national laws;
Enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women; and,
Adopt and strengthen sound policies and enforceable legislation for the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls at all levels.

These targets are not indicators per se, and do not create a new reporting framework. On the contrary, the United Nations encourages governments and organizations to use the SDGs to guide their activities. Reporting on progress towards these overarching and important goals should be done using already existing frameworks and indicators that best suit each context, organization and issue.

In this space, we will continue to report on — and track — efforts to measure the progress of the United States towards Goal 5. We will also share other interesting information around the topic. Your thoughts and additional materials may be sent to info@smashstrategies.com. We look forward to collaborating with you.

Women Mediating Peace Talks: A Long Road to Parity

Last week, I was at Durham University in a setting made for a Harry Potter movie. I was there for an expert meeting on increasing the number of women high-level mediators, or special envoys, in peace negotiations led by the United Nations or other regional bodies. Between 1991 and 2011, the UN tracked 31 negotiations, and you can literally count the number of women chief mediators on one hand. At the same time, women have played other high-level mediation roles globally, as well as significant roles in conflict mediation at local levels, often negotiating safe passage for access to humanitarian assistance.

Increased global stability is inextricably tied to greater numbers of women mediators, negotiators, signatories and witnesses to peace talks. Women’s participation translates to more durable and longer lasting agreements. When women are engaged in the process, agreements are 64 percent less likely to fail, and 35 percent more likely to last 15 years.

This gathering comes at a critical time. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is committed to increase the UN’s emphasis on conflict prevention and mediation and the number of women who serve in these roles globally. Over the last two years, three regional networks of women mediators have launched: a Nordic network, an African network and a Mediterranean network. We’ve seen more women negotiators, representing parties to conflict. In the Colombia peace process, women comprised 33 percent of negotiators overall, with women on both the government and FARC teams. And, there was a Gender Subcommission to review proposals and agreements. Here in the U.S., the Women, Peace and Security Act of 2017 has just been signed into law.

Here are my takeaways and lessons learned:

1) Political will supporting women special envoys is critical. Special envoys are usually former presidents, prime ministers, foreign ministers, or high-level diplomats, with strong political connections and diplomatic skills, and who are acceptable to parties to the conflict. There are enough women with experience and expertise to fill these roles. Governments and the international community need to be clear in advocating for specific women and publicly supporting those appointments.

2) UN Security Council Resolutions committing to more women mediators aren’t enough. There must be more action. Countries need to take concrete actions, such as enacting legislation (like the US Women, Peace & Security Act), signaling to those with responsibility that they are expected to nominate women, and ensuring that National Action Plans for Women, Peace and Security commit to increase women’s participation as mediators (only the NAPs of Ghana, Rwanda and Sweden do so).

3) The UN should provide incentives to countries that nominate women. Countries should put forward women who meet the criteria for these roles, including former presidents, prime ministers, foreign ministers, and high-level diplomats. Those at the UN with responsibility for receiving nominations can request gender balanced slates of nominees, require an explanation when slates do not have gender parity, and give more consideration to those on slates that do.

4) Networks of women mediators provide a pipeline. These networks span several regions and are growing. Many of the members are ready to serve as special envoys or high-level members of their teams. Identifying these women and ensuring they are on both formal and informal rosters is key to increasing their visibility, highlighting their suitability and providing access to key meetings and forums. Networks can also provide platforms for knowledge sharing and, if necessary, coaching to deepen skills.

5) We should broaden who we consider for service as a special envoy. In addition to the types of people who have served to date, we should also look at those who have mediated trade disputes, or those who have served as mediators in judicial settings. There are many women in these roles globally, with strong and tested dispute resolution skills.

Bottom line, there are women who can fill these roles. We have a Secretary-General committed to action, and it’s on all of us to make this a reality.

Girls Plus on International Day of the Girl

There are 1.1 billion girls in the world today, and they can be a powerful force for progress if their talents and skills are nurtured and developed.

October 11 is International Day of the Girl, an annual day to raise awareness of the critical importance of focusing on girls. It’s also a day to recommit to ensuring that girls have equal access to education, skills, and services so that, as they mature into young women and adults, they can fully contribute to their families, communities and countries. Yet, while it is important to focus on the potential and promise of girls, we can’t ignore the building blocks put into place by the generations of women who have come before them.

We know that educating girls can help end poverty. Preventing child marriage or early pregnancy for a girl 10-14 years old translates into her being healthier as she grows up. If we can keep her in school, she will learn critical thinking skills that will help her continue her education, and create value in her community. If we can inspire her to think of herself as a community leader, she may grow up to lead a civil society organization or run for political office.

Having said that, we also cannot ignore the vital role that adult women have and continue to play in families and countries around the world. We need to salute the progress that has been made to bring families above the poverty line, to close the wage gap and to represent citizens in public life, in large part due to the efforts of women across the globe. We must acknowledge this work, and the willingness of these women to fight against gender stereotypes, often putting themselves at personal, physical risk, and take part in the global conversation around changing gender norms and creating a more equitable world.

As part of this, we need to acknowledge that women of every age, from adolescence through old age can play a valuable role in their families and communities. For while older women are often the backbone of their families, making an enormous contribution as caregivers, income-earners, educators and mediators, they are also some of the most vulnerable and invisible in society because of the combined effects of age and gender-based discrimination. Older women’s role in society and the skills they can offer should be recognized. For example, in times of food shortages, it is generally older women who know how to collect, process and prepare wild foods. Older women can also play an important role in social norm change for the younger women in their lives.

We also need to use this day to continue to expand the conversation, and engage men and boys. We need to bring entire families and communities into this discussion, making the case for why women’s equality, and girls’ participation, is good for everyone. From parents, siblings and grandparents to religious or tribal leaders, teachers and reporters, we all must be engaged if efforts to improve the lives of young women are going to succeed. Let’s redouble these efforts, starting this October 11.

Bottom Line Up Front: Women Key to Economic Growth

To their detriment, the world’s economies don’t fully utilize women’s talents and skills to drive economic growth and create jobs. If women participated in the labor force at the same rate as men, global GDP could increase from $12 to $28 trillion by 2025. To translate, this is an 11-26 percent increase, which at the highest level is roughly equal to the GDP of the U.S. and China, the world’s largest two economies. Bringing it home, U.S. GDP could increase by five percent.

Last week, I spoke on a panel at the Americas Competitiveness Forum (ACF) in Mexico City. The ACF brings together government officials, private sector leaders, academics and non-governmental advocates from across the Americas to strategize about how to increase growth. The panel focused on how to effectively break down barriers – whether legal or normative – to women’s economic participation.

All the panelists agreed on the need to address these barriers. That alone is progress: the conversation is no longer about why we need policies to support women’s participation in the economy at levels commensurate with their skills, but about what works to get them there.

We addressed what government and the private sector can each do, and the exponential impact when they work together. We discussed concrete recommendations for legal reform, the need for confidence building and skill development for women and girls, the insidious nature of gender bias, and whether quotas for job categories work.

Legal reform is key. According to the World Bank’s Women, Business & the Law Report, 90 percent of countries have at least one law impeding women’s access to jobs and entrepreneurship – some limit the types of jobs women can hold, some the hours we work, some the amount of paid family leave available, and some our ability to borrow money or sign a contract.

We grappled with the negative economic impact of gender based violence (GBV). At least 35 percent of women worldwide have experienced GBV. This is a scourge, as well as a tremendous drag on economic and workplace productivity. The U.S. loses $1.8 billion in productivity annually, and 8 million days of paid work due to GBV. Ensuring that women have economic opportunity is fundamental; but, if we don’t pass and implement laws to counter GBV, we won’t make the progress we need.

Here are some takeaways:

1) Working together, government and business can accelerate women’s economic participation. For example, government can remove legal barriers to women’s access to financial services, like requiring a husband’s signature for a business loan. Banks can support creative ways for women to bank, including mobile technology and mobile bankers, where women at marketplaces can bank on the spot. Taken together, these reforms make it easier for women to start businesses and safely save their proceeds.

2) Leading by example is important. Governments and businesses can procure goods and services from women-owned enterprises. Both can commit to considering women for promotion to senior management in equal numbers, providing child care at the workplace, and examining and addressing pay gaps. For example, in 2015, Salesforce reviewed its salary structure, and if unexplained differences in pay popped up by gender, made salary adjustments. These steps are not just good practice, but effective tools to recruit talented workers – both men and women.

3) Harnessing interest in women’s economic empowerment can start a conversation about other issues that hold women and girls back. Every country and community wants more jobs and more prosperity. We can use this imperative to raise other issues like the need to address GBV, and the need for girls to complete their educations and learn much needed job skills.

4) Investing in girls and young women is transformative. This is true whether we ensure that girls have equal access to education, or are exposed to the broad range of economic opportunities. Every additional year of a girl’s education increases her wage potential by 12 percent. While in Mexico City, I was heartened by an event taking place alongside ACF. There were literally thousands of young women and men thronging the convention hall, jostling each other for the best seats, and lining up to hear speakers from Mexico and beyond. The topic wasn’t sports, music, or the latest video game – it was entrepreneurship. We need to capture this enthusiasm from young women especially and keep it going.

BOOK REVIEW: Maid in India – All in a Day’s Work

In July, I read the Washington Post article about 150 maids who rioted at the Mahagun Moderna apartment complex in Noida, outside Delhi, India. These workers stormed the complex because they believed a maid had been beaten and held captive overnight by her employers after asking for unpaid wages. The footage of the day is chaotic, with police (or security guards) clubbing protesting workers, and people running between parts of the complex. This story surprised me, given the disparity in power between maids and employers, and the economic pressure they face to send needed funds to their families.

The article quoted Tripti Lahiri, the Asia editor for Quartz, who has written Maid in India, a nuanced book on the proliferation and complexity of domestic help in that country. The book is riveting, disturbing, timely, and important. It is a richly textured picture of societal and household dynamics in India, and provides an understanding of who takes these jobs, voluntarily or not, what their lives are like, and the challenges they face. In Lahiri’s words: “We [the employers] eat first, they later, often out of food portioned out for them; we live in front, they in the back; we sit on chairs and they on the floor; we drink from glasses and ceramic plates and they from ones made of steel set aside for them; we call then buy their names, and they address us by titles.”

As India’s middle class grows, more Indians can, and do, hire domestic help to do virtually everything: driving, taking care of children, cooking, serving meals, and gardening. In some households, there are ten or twelve servants, supervised and micro-managed by a family member, most often when the worker is tending to children.

We meet employees who can’t speak for themselves, employees who haven’t been paid for years of work, who have been abused and in some cases raped. We meet parents from rural villages who haven’t heard from their children, working as domestic servants, in years. We meet employment brokers, some with the flimsiest of excuses about why a worker is missing and can’t be found, or hasn’t been paid, and who then turn off their phones. We meet employers, some of whom seem decent and others who are shockingly unabashed about paying the maids virtually nothing for literally years of service, and demanding constant work. We also meet domestic servants who see this occupation as a way into the middle class, and especially if working for expats, can make more than some government workers.

One of the most harrowing stories is of a member of parliament, who along with his wife is charged with murdering a maid. The description brings to light the lack of accountability in general and the flaws in the grindingly slow Indian criminal justice system, along with unrealistic expectations that illiterate servants can navigate these complexities.

But, this is not just a story about what happens in Delhi or Mumbai. It’s also about the impact economic growth has had in rural India. Many rural families depend on these workers to send money back. Young people (literally often boys and girls, despite laws prohibiting those under 14 from working) travel from far villages to work in the households of acquaintances or strangers. The contrast between village life and life in the cities, where homes have running water, wood or marble floors and numerous appliances, is stark. Many employers prefer these rural workers because are more malleable, but then complain that they don’t speak Hindi or understand how to run a washing machine.

This book helps us understand the larger phenomena. It also documents a nascent commitment to legal reform to protect these workers and hold employers accountable. It highlights some of the NGOs that are advocating for stronger laws and better treatment, as well as the challenges they face. There’s certainly a long way to go, but Lahiri’s telling of these stories and highlighting them is another step along that path.

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