The Girl Effect

Comments

[Sara Anderson]

I think about this video a lot. It terrifies me a little to see how women's income is family property, but a man's income is his own.

[kathy a.]

shit, lisa, you have me crying. and hoping. and thinking about how lucky my girl is. and that girls can change the world, given half a chance.

[low-tech cyclist]

In another time, that might have been enough.

Now, of course, we've also got to get a handle on climate change before the land where tnose girls would graze their cattle becomes too arid to support them.

Speaking of which, aren't we in a fairly brief blip of remaining time when animal protein can really be part of the solution for the problems of a large number of people? Even here in the west, once carbon is appropriately priced, meat will become much more expensive, because it simply uses up a lot more resources than growing wheat or corn or whatnot. Isn't the developing world is going to simply run into the resource equation before carbon pricing even becomes an issue for them, especially as their parts of the world become less fertile due to global warming?

[Lisa Simeone]

Um, the video isn't about raising cattle. It's about the big effect of small loans. It's about the power of micro-lending, specifically to women.

They happened to use an example of a woman raising cows. They could just as well have used an example of a woman selling fruit, starting an embroidery business, carving knickknacks, baking cakes, opening a grocery store, etc. etc. -- all of which women around the world are doing thanks to microloans.

And abundant research exists to prove that when poor women receive microloans, they invest the money they earn in their families, into their children's and family members' health and education. When men receive microloans, they tend to blow it on drink, gambling, and candy.

The video is about empowering women and, thereby, improving societies.

[amy]

I thought it was a great video but strange that they would suggest giving loans to girls rather than adult women. Wouldn't children be particularly vulnerable to having elders take the money / property away? Or is the idea that they would be able to go to school first and then invest the money later?

[amy]

And how to overcome barriers to girls' education that go far beyond money?

[Lisa Simeone]

Meant to include the statistics. From Alyson Warhurst, economist at the Warwick Business School:

Young women have a 90% probability of investing their earned income back into their families, while the likelihood of men doing the same is only 30% to 40%.

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/apr2009/gb2009048_644459.htm

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/blog/europeinsight/archives/2009/04/the_economic_po.html

Established, well-respected microlending organizations such as the Women's Opportunity Fund and Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn confirm this experience.

[Lisa Simeone]

Amy, some answers to your questions here:

http://www.halftheskymovement.org/

And here:

http://www.girleffect.org/

And here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23Women-t.html#

And at the other links I posted above (I think our comments crossed in cyberspace).

The upshot is that educating girls and giving money to women -- you can define "girls" and "women" however you want -- makes villages, towns, cities, countries, and societies stronger. Leaving them out of the equation leads to poverty and violence, and we see plenty of evidence of that evey day.

[kathy a.]

what i find moving, and necessary, is that this program focuses on giving individuals the means to do better for themselves and those around them. and that is HUGE. it allows steps toward independence and equality. it improves lives in the here and now.

so many matters of policy ignore the individual and immediate needs, focusing on something broader and in the future. if my family is hungry today, i will be thinking of that -- not about solving global warming, or changing entire political systems, or whether my one cow represents cattle farming worldwide and is propping up factory farming and its evils.

this is not at all a new idea. we've all heard "give a man a fish" vs. "teach a man to fish." what is fresh and is working is that small amounts of money lent to women with ideas pays wonderful social dividends. the money is lent; it is not charity. the women gain social standing as their ideas unfold and work pays off; they become less dependent. their families benefit, and so does their community. what's not to love?

i'm reminded of an old photo of young women in an african-american girls' school in the south, which a colleague used to keep on her office door. i think it was taken in the first couple of decades of the 1900's; all the teenaged students wore white cotton dresses for the photo, full skirts nearly to their ankles. there was a caption, handwritten on the negative, stating the school motto: "lift as you climb."

that's not bad advice for any of us. it is critical in parts of the world that are much worse off.

[low-tech cyclist]

Um, the video isn't about raising cattle. It's about the big effect of small loans. It's about the power of micro-lending, specifically to women.

They happened to use an example of a woman raising cows.

I think their message, as you've expressed it here, is a worthwhile one. I just don't think they've conveyed their intended message. Not just that they didn't convey it well; having watched the video a few times now, I'd have to say they didn't really convey it at all.

The video mentions 'loan' exactly once, at about the 1-minute mark. It uses 'cow' or 'cows' three times, 'herd' once, and the milk from the cows once. That's five mentions of cows or cow by-products, and only one brief mention of the loan. The recap that starts at about the 1:40 mark doesn't even mention loans.

If they remade the video, I think inclusion of the statistic about women in developing countries ploughing a much greater portion of their income back into their families than men do would be essential. Without that, it reduces to a vague argument about underutilizing women's potential, but it doesn't explain how changing that would change the overall picture.

But in addition to that, as I said earlier, the makers of the video need to find a good way to emphasize the bit about microloans, rather than having only one mention of loans flicker past in between school uniforms and cows.

I'm quite aware of microloans, and I think they're a great idea, which is why I'd like to see the makers of this video do a better job in getting their message across, now that I know what it is!

[litbrit]

ltc, I believe the intention of the YouTube The Girl Effect clip is similar to the aim of a good billboard: to use a brief slice of time and imagery to draw your attention to a "product"--in this case, a solution to a problem. To plant a seed, as it were, and start the conversation wherein actual details about the product (i.e. the specifics of microloans or educational programs for girls, etc.) are covered at greater length.

As such, the initial message will be snappy, attention-getting, message-encapsulating, and somewhat abstract and generalizing. It isn't about helping women raise cattle or provide water to their communities per se, in other words. It's about the very idea of helping them--in whatever context, and en masse--and why it's important. An ad that went into the kind of detail you propose would not be a snappy ad, but rather, a presentation or a documentary.