The Payoff From Women's Rights.

WOMEN'S rights; SOCIAL conditions of women; WOMEN in development; WOMEN & democracy; ECONOMIC development; INTERNATIONAL relations

The article highlights the social benefits of the advancement of women's rights. Women are critical to economic development, active civil society, and good governance, especially in developing countries. Focusing on women is often the best way to reduce birth rates and child mortality, improve health, nutrition, and education, stem the spread of HIV and AIDS, build robust and self-sustaining community organizations, and encourage grassroots democracy. Gender disparities hit women and girls the hardest, but ultimately all of society pays a price for them. Achieving gender equality is deemed so critical to reducing poverty and improving governance that it has become a development objective in its own right. The U.S. has advocated women's rights as a moral imperative or as a way to promote democracy. In so doing, it might have compounded the difficulty of its task, by irking conservative religious forces or the authoritarian regimes it otherwise supports. But the U.S. can also make an economic case for women's rights, which may be more acceptable to traditionalists. Promoting women's rights because they spur development and economic growth is a powerful way for the U.S. to advance its foreign policy in the future while minimizing the ideological debates that have frustrated it in the past.