ESL Blogs

It`s March and Women`s History Month is rolling along. Today, we are getting a sense of how women around the world are doing in fields like politics and business. What progress has been made, what areas still may need improvement.
Here are the good news:
We earn more, we do more. We run countries and households alike. Our kids are healthier and so are we. But here is the bad news. An estimated 60 percent of the world`s hungry are female. More than 500 million do not know how to read or write. Seven out of ten have experienced physical or sexual violence. More than 600 million live in countries where getting beaten by your husband is not considered a crime. 117 countries have equal pay laws, but women are still paid 10 to 30 percent less than men. There are only 21 women CEOs in the Fortune 500, and less than 20 percent of the world`s political power is in the hands of women leaders.

But here`s how things could be: if a mother can read, her child is 50 percent more likely to survive past the age of five. If women were paid the same as men, gross domestic product would be up between nine and 16 percent. And those Fortune 500 companies, the ones with the highest number of women board members were 53 percent more profitable than those with the fewest women.

And after all that, consider this: women outlive men on an average of five to ten years. Ladies, the good news is in the end, we still get the last laugh.