Powerful women

SD = (HC x SP x EE) ** Women
where,
SD = Sustainable Development
HC = Human Condition (basic needs such as shelter, food, clean water, medicine)
SP = Social Position (such as cast or cultural prosecution)
EE = Enabling Environment (everything from climate & weather to agriculture policy, land ownership rights , business start-up complexity , access to investment funds)


This is a very interesting equation presented by Kevin McCort, the CEO at CARE Canada, to help describe the complexity in international development. Note the three factors HC, SP and EE are all interacting functions and the product is then raised to the power of women. A few women will have a small change in development, but a lot will cause an enormous change. And a zero in any factor, no matter how many women are involved will generate no results.

I have heard George Roter, co-founder of Engineers Without Borders comment that if you monitored just one single factor in a society as a proxy for development it would be women's education level. For a society to have more women with more education will require a cascade of things to have occurred which in total will minimize the systemic problems associated with poverty such as access to healthcare, social imbalance, etc - in essence HC, SP & EE.