5 ways #globaldev professionals can ensure a fairer future for women and girls

At a recent “She Matters” conference in Berlin, Germany, a group of parliamentarians, nongovernmental organizations and practitioners convened to discuss how they could best enable the economic empowerment of women — an area that German Chancellor Angela Merkel has identified as a priority for the upcoming G-7 summit in early June.

At the event, Devex sat down with Ann Starrs, new CEO of the Guttmacher Institute — an organization advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights through research, education and policy analysis — to discuss future plans in pursuit of this mission.

Starrs outlined the pressing nature of action in this area: While the number of women who wished to avoid pregnancy through effective contraception had grown from 510 million in 2003 to 652 million in 2014, there were still 225 million women worldwide who wished to avoid pregnancy but were not using effective methods. Progress, Starrs said, had profound implications for the autonomy of the lives that these women wished to lead, and had all manner of socio-economic benefits.