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Comment by pstuart | Hacker News Reader

The one neat trick to end extreme poverty is to give women full and equal rights, most importantly, bodily autonomy.

I do not follow, could you expand please?

There's a lot out there if one were to search on the topic, but basically, by allowing women to engage in entrepreneurial endeavors by giving the rights to conduct that work, and, more importantly, not forcing them to be baby-making machines unlocks the potential of half the population.

In societies where they are effectively slaves (and breeders), they are not part of the economy and therefore cannot add to it.

And then there's just the humanitarian part of it too...

  https://unfoundation.org/blog/post/3-essential-issues-to-empower-women-and-end-poverty/
  https://caribbean.unfpa.org/en/news/empower-rural-women-%E2%80%93-end-hunger-and-poverty-1
  https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8293807/

It's more complicated than that. Here in East Africa women are allowed to work and run businesses. In fact, most of my friends here who run a business are female. The majority of them run small shops selling food, one sells phones and accessories and another works in such a shop that is also female owned. A number of these are also single mothers because their husbands left them, mostly because they were unable to provide for their families. It is not just about the right of women to earn an income, but also about men being under pressure by their peers to be good providers, and being unable to do so. Some women told me they are not even interested in getting married any more. They just want to have some kids and then manage on their own.

Either way, only education can change things. Both men and women (boys and girls) need to be educated about better ways and how to cooperate to provide for their families together.

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