Empowering women has been held up as an answer to myriad global problems, starting with poverty. According to the Global Poverty Project, women make up half the world's population and yet represent a staggering 70% of the world's poor. As the report notes, “We live in a world in which women living in poverty face gross inequalities and injustice from birth to death. From poor education to poor nutrition to vulnerable and low pay employment, the sequence of discrimination that a woman may suffer during her entire life is unacceptable but all too common.”
