Half the Sky

by Nicholas D. Kristof

French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, who founded Doctors Without Borders, bluntly declared of development: “Progress is achieved through women.” The Center for Global Development issued a major report explaining “why and how to put girls at the center of development.” CARE is taking women and girls as the centerpiece of its antipoverty efforts. The Nike Foundation and the NoVo Foundation are both focusing on building opportunities for girls in the developing world. “Gender inequality hurts economic growth,” Goldman Sachs concluded in a 2008 research report that emphasized how much developing countries could improve their economic performance by educating girls. Partly as a result of that research, Goldman Sachs committed $100 million to a “10,000 Women” campaign meant to give that many women a business education.