Worldwatch Paper #161: Correcting Gender Myopia: Gender Equity, Women's Welfare, And The Environment

Author: Danielle Nierenberg

ISBN: 1-878071-64-5
Publication Date: Sept. 2002
68 pages

At international conferences throughout the 1990's--in Rio de Janeiro, Vienna, Cairo, and Beijing--a new vision of women's health, welfare, and rights was created. This vision acknowledged the deep connections between support for educational, economic, social, and political opportunity for women on the one hand, and progress in stabilizing population growth, protecting the environment, and improving human health on the other.

Despite its potency, this vision has yet to be fully realized. Gender myopia, or blindness to the inequities between women and men, continues to afflict women in many different settings. In Correcting Gender Myopia, Worldwatch researcher, Danielle Nierenberg, reviews the state of women around the globe, documents the links between women's welfare and population, and charts the progress, or lack thereof, in achieving the gender equity that must underlie any viable effort to attain sustainability.