Women at the Centre, Not the Margins

I grew up watching the women in my family carry households, communities and, in the hardest years, each other. It shaped how I think about development: not as a set of statistics, but as a question of who gets to stand at the centre of it.

We have worked to put girls in classrooms, women in parliament, and women's cooperatives at the heart of rural economies, not as a gesture, but because it is simply good policy. A nation that educates and employs half its population at a fraction of its potential is a nation working against itself.

There is more to do, and I am the first to say our work is unfinished. But the direction is not in question.