the solution

'Women hold up half the sky' ~Chinese saying

A recent New York Times magazine dedicates nearly every spread to the crucial and 'seminal moral challenge of our time.' Carefully detailed here and here. And captured in a book by Pulitzer Prize winner authors Nicholas Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, called 'Half the Sky - Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide'. This powerful call to action surely merits our attention as the authors suggest 'The oppression of women worldwide is the human rights cause of our time. And their liberation could help solve many of the world's problems, from poverty to child mortality to terrorism...'The world is awakening to a powerful truth: Women and girls aren't the problem; they're the solution.'

The numbers, from 08.23.09 edition of The New York Times Magazine:

100 Million women and girls are missing around the world
because of gender discrimination

2100 women die in childbirth for every 100,000 live births
in Sierra Leone

5000 women die a year in honor killings, the majority in the Muslim world,
according to U.N. estimates

1 percent of the world's landowners are women

21 percent of young women surveyed in Ghana reported that their
sexual initiation was by rape

130 Million women around the world have been subjected to genital cutting

39,000 baby girls died annually in China because parents didn't give
the same medical care

1 bride is burned almost every two hours in India - punishment for
an inadequate dowry or to make way for another wife

Please take a moment to investigate and consider this monumental issue. And, yes there are ways to help from across the globe via impossibly different circumstance.