There are way more than ten reasons, honestly, that we need to do more to empower women and girls, around the world. But the ten tweets below are an excellent dive into some of the more disarming facts about the lives of females, especially in the poorest parts of the world. What gets me is that behind every fact or figure, both negative and positive, are the minute to minute, day to day lives led. Olutosin Oladosu-Adebowale from Nigeria birthed in a hospital in Lagos where, she writes recently on Impatient Optimists, "We were forced to labor on benches, as there was only one bed." Sheena, a young woman in India, someone's daughter, niece, friend, had to wait 28 hours to get medical attention at the health center she was at; she died while giving birth to her first child. And Sonal Kapoor, a 24 year old up and coming professional in Delhi, started a small school to educate at-risk girls through the arts.
Please don't just read the facts below. Choose one and learn more - think about the girls and women behind the numbers. And pledge to yourself to take action. Share the information, contribute to a project that directly benefits girls or women on Catapult, or simply learn more.
This post was written by Amie Newman, a communications officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
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