Pick of the week: why women?
It has been just over two weeks since Channel 16 launched its Green Scarves for Solidarity Campaign with Afghan women. The aim of the project is to ensure that the voices of Afghan women are heard in upcoming peace negotiations, and that any international deal agreed is inclusive and sustainable.
However, the campaign represents only one strand of a much wider issue: the need for female empowerment worldwide. In this pick of the week, Channel 16 brings together some of the pieces that demonstrate why enhanced female power makes sense in economic, political and development terms.
1. ‘Food Security Must Be A 21st Century Priority‘
Speaking in Italy on 17 October 2011, the UN Women Executive Director Michelle Bachelet argued in her presentation that “one cause of food insecurity is the poverty and discrimination faced by women and girls, including women farmers” and that a vital tool in the fight against world hunger was to “unleash [women's] untapped potential to increase agricultural production”. Read the full text of the speech here.
2. ‘The Woes of Women Amid Climate Change’
Focusing on the effect that climate change has had on women living in rural areas in Ghana, this AllAfrica article underlines why they must be part of the climate solution.
3. ’A Solution For A Struggling Global Economy: Gender Equality’
This interesting Forbes article considers how impediments to women’s economic success can have a damaging effect on the state of the global economy as a whole.
In many cases, the difficulties for women begin from childhood. The Australian ‘I Am A Girl’ Project tries to consider what it means to be a girl in the 21st century by relating the stories of ten girls from around the world via films. Watch some of the ‘I Am A Girl’ stories here.
The project is a powerful reminder of the fact that female empowerment is necessary not just to challenge climate change, economic slowdown and hunger, but also at an individual level to enhance the wellbeing and prospects of half the world’s population.
———————-