economic woman

I’ve been enjoying Economist’s View’s dispatches from the Milken Institute Global Conference. (An aside: Someone should start a website that aggregates blogged accounts of conferences around the world. I don’t have the time or resources to attend nearly as many meetings as I’d like to, so I appreciate reading about them.)

Here’s a bit on a session with Ricardo Hausmann, Myron Scholes, and Maria Eitel, called “Harnessing Growth to Break Poverty’s Grip on the Developing World.” Eitel is the president of the Nike foundation, and she made an argument for more aid to women.

Did you know that only 5 cents on every dollar of development aid is “devoted to improving the economic prospects for women”? The session also touched on the difficulty of investing in women who already provide essential care and insurance.

Even though there are large long-term benefits to helping women, it is in nobody’s short-term interest to take women out of their traditional role in the family and community where they provide water, firewood, and food for the family, care for sick family members, are expected to provide insurance for the family by dropping out of school if the family needs help, and so on.

Click over to the original post for a little more on solutions.