WOMEN, CHILDREN AND POVERTY

Caring for Women is Caring for Children

Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General

IFPD promotes the health, education and empowerment of women in developing countries by providing them with effective means to fight poverty and improve their own and their children's living conditions in a sustainable way.

• In many countries and cultures, women are denied basic economic and social rights, such as access to education and health services or to credit and ownership.
• The rights of a woman– including her rights to education, to dignity and respect, to adequate health care, to resources and to special care in pregnancy and childbirth – are a priority as such but also represent a crucial and fundamental asset for their children's physical and psychological development.
• Governments, families or traditions often force women into marriage and pregnancy without regard to their age or their own desires, violating their basic right to self-determination.
• Women represent 70% of the people living in extreme poverty and two-thirds of the world's 880 million illiterate adults.
• Complications during pregnancy and childbirth, most of which could be prevented, are the leading cause of death and disability for women in developing countries. When a mother dies, surviving children are more likely to die early and less likely to attend school or complete their education.
• Access to contraception helps to avoid unwanted pregnancies, and to lower fertility as well as maternal and infant mortality. To this day, about 200 million women in less developed countries do not have access to safe and effective contraceptive methods.
• Educating girls and women is the most efficient means to promote gender equality, and delay early marriage and pregnancy. If women are educated, they are more likely to exercise their own rights and judgements, to use modern health and family planning services, and share in decision-making in their home and community; they will send their own daughters to school and be able to create positive opportunities for their children's future.

"Gender equaliy and the well-being of children are inextricably linked. When women are empowered to lead full and productive lives, children and families prosper. […]. If we care about the health and well-being of children today and into the future, we must work now to ensure that women and girls have equal opportunities to be educated, […], to achieve economic self-sufficiency and to be protected from violence and discrimination."

Ann M. Veneman, UNICEF Executive Director

The excerpts below are taken from the report "The State of the World's Children 2007", published by UNICEF:

• Gender equality will not only empower women to overcome poverty, but also their children, families, communities and countries. When seen in this light, gender equality is not only morally right – it is pivotal to human progress and sustainable development.
• Women's ability to control their own lives and make decisions that affect their families is closely linked to child nutrition, health and education. In families where women are key decision-makers, the proportion of resources devoted to children is far greater than in those in which women have a less decisive role.
• Promoting gender equality and empowering women – Millennium Development Goal number 3 – will propel all of the other goals, from reducing poverty and hunger to saving children's lives, improving maternal health, ensuring universal education, combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, and ensuring environmental sustainability.