CARE Representative Discusses Women's Rights in the Developing World

"Five hundred thirty-six thousand women die each year due to pregnancy and childbirth. Many of these causes of death are preventable. This is the maternal health crisis we face," said Derreck Kayongo, the advocacy field coordinator for CARE International. "Maternal health is the least likely of all of the Millennium Development Goals to be met by 2015."

Westerners should not dismiss dangerous childbirth practices in the developing world as "part of their culture" and let it endanger mothers' lives. He fears that Western women might "believe people who are saying that they don't have jurisdiction to comment on what is going on in the developing world." Kayongo respects what Western women have achieved; he admires the women's rights movement that happened in the Western world in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

The women's movement, he said, needs to continue for those living outside of North America and Europe. As Western women achieve parity, they do not fight quite so hard. Kayongo would rather see them fight for the other women of the world, the "women in India, women in Africa, and women in Eastern Europe-they are living a hellish life, and that is an outrage."

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Microfinance Debated: Mission to Serve the Ultra Poor?

It is estimated that there is a $300 billion gap globally between what current financial institutions offer and what low-income people need. This is the space that microfinance institutions (MFIs) around the world seek to fill.

At the 2009 microfinance conference-sponsored by the Harris School of Public Policy Studies and the Booth School of Business-heated debate centered on how to fill that $300 billion gap when clients are poor, and many institutions are nonprofit. In fact, speakers debated more about which model of microfinance is most effective than how the field could unite to best serve those who fall within the "capital gap."

Ultimately the question of whom MFIs serve takes secondary importance to a bigger question: are developmental finance institutions successful in alleviating poverty?

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