Empower Women, End Poverty. Get Moving.

Address poverty by addressing sexism, says Change.org Changemaker and CEO of CARE USA Helen Gayle.

In a recent interview on our Global Health blog, Gayle tells us that "the best way to end poverty is by empowering women," and applauds President Obama and Congress for demonstrating their support for that belief by taken steps on behalf on women around the world. Investing in women and girls produces mighty returns: "extra year that a girl goes to school will increase her later wages by 10-20%." Now that's a nice chunk of change. But, in some ways, the value of education is priceless: every extra year of education decreases the risk that, if that girl eventually becomes a mother, her baby will die while still in infancy.

Besides access to education and financial resources, addressing women's health is of paramount concern in the fight to end global poverty. Gayle tells us, "One of the best ways to empower women is by ensuring that pregnancy and delivery are joyous occasions, not risk of a death sentence." Due to poor maternal health services, we lose over half a million women per year to largely preventable pregnancy-related deaths. They lose the chance to make productive contributions, to help raise their families out of poverty. After all, education and financial access won't do any good if they don't live to make use of it. So let's start preventing those preventable deaths.

Photo credit: Tiago Ribeiro