Inspiring Women

On International Women's Day, people across the globe celebrate women's achievements. Last year on this day, I was privileged to be in Liberia with two inspiring women — Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first democratically elected female president of an African nation, and Michelle Bachelet, Executive Director of UN Women and former president of Chile. The example of these two women inspired me to think more courageously about a future where women are safe, healthy, educated and can prosper.

One year later, a lot has changed in our world. Global movements for positive change have been led and more women than ever before are online, turning their cell phones, and their social networks, into powerful tools to improve their lives and the futures of their families and communities.

I've met with some of the women who are at the forefront of these movements over the last twelve months. They realize that women around the world still face major challenges in the search for health and stability. They are worried about facts like these:

Many women around the world still cannot get access to secondary education.
1 in 7 girls in some developing countries is forced to marry before the age of 15.
Women want access to reproductive healthcare but cannot get access to it.
Women around the globe will lose a child every 20 seconds from a disease that could have been prevented if they had access to lifesaving vaccines.
Many women, in what should be one of the happiest moments of their lives, go into childbirth not knowing if they will come out alive because they do not have access to proper maternal healthcare.
For many women, cooking the daily meal can be deadly beacuse they do not have access to clean cookstoves, and unsafe cooking methods put their homes and their health in jeopardy every day.
Women in developing countries don't think of these challenges as isolated problems, but face them as part of their daily lives, and want to overcome them as a way to build a better future.
This has to Change