Take Action: Help Women Through Foreign Aid Reform

All around the world, women and girls remain more vulnerable and powerless than their male counterparts, with less control over their bodies, daily lives, and futures.

Women are more likely to be malnourished and living in extreme poverty, often without access to paid employment or to land and property rights. Women are also victims of gender based violence such as domestic abuse, human trafficking, sexual violence in armed conflict, and female genital mutilation.

Raising the social, political, and economic status of women is inextricably linked from other Millennium Development Goals like improved literacy and maternal health. All of the goals work together so women can have greater voice and control over the decisions that affect their lives and roles (see below).

You Can Help

You have an opportunity to help improve the lives of women and achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Right now, Bread for the World is advocating to improve the way the U.S. delivers foreign aid, making it more streamlined and more effective in addressing the specific needs of women.

Why Foreign Aid Reform?

U.S. foreign aid makes a huge impact on the lives of millions of women around the world, both through publicly-run programs and through grants to private organizations like CRWRC. Our country’s foreign assistance program has helped to reduce the number of mothers who die in childbirth and increase the proportion of girls who go to school.

However, the U.S. system of foreign aid could be much more effective with significant reform. The Foreign Assistance Act hasn’t been updated since 1961, and fifty-year-old legislation is no longer relevant for development in the 21st century. To improve the quality of our country’s development assistance, Congress should pass new legislation to clearly establish that poverty reduction is a priority of our country’s foreign policy.

Reforms to make the foreign aid system more efficient and streamlined will ensure that each tax dollar of aid will go further in assisting the world’s poor--70 percent of whom are women. This shockingly disproportionate statistic reminds us that prioritizing poverty reduction means that programs must also prioritize the specific needs of women, who are the majority of the poor.

Take action today!

Tell Congress to reform foreign aid so it better helps poor and marginalized women!

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