How will empowering women solve other world problems?
Empowering women tends to lead to faster economic growth, which in turn tends to undermine extremism and reduce civil conflict. In addition, there’s some evidence that countries that marginalize women tend to be more likely to have the macho values of a boy’s locker room or an armed camp and are more prone to violence – bringing women into the picture tends to result in more security. Q: Can you give an example? A: One example is Pakistan and Bangladesh. They used to be all the same country until Bangladesh split off in 1971, and at that time Bangladesh seemed utterly hopeless. Kissinger described it as an international basket case. But the one thing Bangladesh did was invest in girls, especially girls’ education, and today Bangladesh has more girls in high school than boys. All these educated girls then poured into the labor force and were the pillar of the new Bangladeshi garment industry, which buttressed the economy and undermined fundamentalists. All those educated women also redu
