早稲田社学 2011 IV

Over the last several decades, it has become accepted wisdom that improving the status of women is one of the most critical factors in international development. When women are educated and can earn and control income, a number of good results follow: infant mortality declines, child health and nutrition improve, agricultural productivity rises, population growth slows, economies expand, and cycles of poverty are broken.

But the challenges remain dauntingly large. In the Middle East, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, large and persistent gender gaps in access to education, health care, technology, and income ― plus a lack of basic rights and pervasive violence against women ― keep women from being fully productive members of society, Entrenched gender discrimination remains a defining characteristic of life for the majority of the world's bottom two billion people, helping sustain the gulf between the poorest and everyone else who shares this planet.

Narrowing that gulf demands more than the interest of the foreign aid and human rights communities, which, to date, have carried out the heavy lifting of women's empowerment in developing countries, funding projects such as schools for girls and microfinance for female entrepreneurs. It requires the involvement of the world's largest companies. Not only does the global private sector have vastly more money than governments and nongovernmental organizations, but it can exert strong influence with its powerful brands and by extending promises of investment and employment Some companies already promote initiatives focused on women as part of their corporate social- responsibility activities ― in other words, to polish their images as good corporate citizens. But the truly transformative shift ― both for1 global corporations and for women worldwide ― will occur when companies understand that empowering women in developing economies affects their bottom lines

The majority of global population growth in the coming decades will occur in those countries where gender inequality is the greatest and. where conservative religious traditions and tribal customs work against women's rights. As multinational corporations search for growth in the developing world, they are beginning to realize that women's disempowerment causes staggering and deeply damaging losses in productivity, economic activity, and human capital, Just as many corporations have found that adopting environmentally sensitive business practices is not only good public relations but also good business, companies that embrace female empowerment will see their labor forces become more productive, the quality of their global supply chains improve, and their customer bases expand, They will also help drive what could be the greatest cultural shift of the twenty-first century.

(Adapted from Foreign Affairs)