when girls do better,the world does better 1000 words
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Answer:
Explanation:
Our flagship World Development
Report 2012 demonstrated that gender equality and economic development are inextricably linked. It showed
that equality not only guarantees basic
rights but also plays a vital role in promoting the robust, shared growth needed to end
extreme poverty in our increasingly competitive, globalized world. The persistent constraints and deprivations that prevent many
of the world’s women from achieving their
potential have huge consequences for individuals, families, communities, and nations.
The 2012 report recognized that expanding
women’s agency—their ability to make decisions and take advantage of opportunities—
is key to improving their lives as well as the
world we all share.
Voice and Agency: Empowering Women
and Girls for Shared Prosperity represents a
major advance in global knowledge on this
critical front. The vast data and thousands
of surveys distilled here cast important light
on the nature of constraints women and
girls continue to face globally.
As an anthropologist, I especially welcome the report’s focus on social norms,
which act as powerful prescriptions for how
men and women should behave. Even where
women can legally own property, they may
not, because those who do become outcasts.
Even where girls go to school and take an
interest in math, teachers and parents may
direct them away from certain studies and
jobs for which social norms say boys are
better suited. Women then enter a smaller
range of jobs with lower barriers to entry,
less stability, and lower wages, continuing a
vicious circle of inequality. Overwhelmingly,
girls and women also perform the unpaid
work of caregiving, for which they are often
penalized with poverty in old age.
Norms over time may become legalized
discrimination, which imposes its own steep
economic cost. As the 19th-century philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote, laws start “by
recognizing the relations they find already
existing.… Those who had already been compelled to obedience became in this manner
legally bound to it.” Rightly, he added, what
“color, race, religion, or in the case of a conquered country, nationality, are to some men,
sex is to all women,” their subordinate status
often codified by law. Today, in 128 countries,
laws in fact treat men and women differently—making it impossible, for example, for
a woman to obtain independently an ID card,
own or use property, access credit, or get
a job. These constraints are fundamentally
unjust. They are also economically unwise.
The good news is that social norms can
and do change. This report identifies promising opportunities and entry points for
lasting transformation, such as interventions that reach across sectors and include
life-skills training, sexual and reproductive
health education, conditional cash transfers, and mentoring. It finds that addressing what the World Health Organization has
identified as an epidemic of violence against
women means sharply scaling up engagement with men and boys.
The report also underlines the vital role
information and communication technologies can play in amplifying women’s voices,
expanding their economic and learning opportunities, and broadening their views and aspirations. As Pakistan’s young activist Malala
Yousafzai said of herself and her peers during
our conversation at the World Bank Group
in 2013, “We spoke, we wrote, we raised our
voices” through the media. “We spoke and
we achieved our goal. Girls are going back to
school and are allowed to go to the market.”
A bold new path toward equality,
grounded in fundamental human rights and
backed by evidence and data, is long overdue. The World Bank Group’s twin goals
of ending extreme poverty and boosting
shared prosperity demand no less than the
full and equal participation of women and
men, girls and boys, around the world.
The World Bank Group is committed
to accelerating and enhancing equality in
everything we do and to shining a spotlight on inequality wherever we find it. This
report does both. It should inform the global
development agenda going forward and
advance momentum toward a better future
for all.