What Women Want

This makes me incredibly happy and proud.

After the Rwandan genocide, 60% of the population left over is female. These women are now taking over economically, starting small businesses and making use of the microlending options open to them. "Women are running coffee plantations and graining mills, and often, they're outearning their male counterparts."
... But women aren't just thriving as money managers in Rwanda; women hold 48% of seats in the Rwandan parliament, which, according to the WaPo, is the highest percentage in the world. And it's not like Rwanda is an anomaly. The World Bank says that "in India's great economic transformation of the past 15 years, states that have the highest percentage of women in the labor force have grown the fastest as well as had the largest reductions in poverty."

And not for the reasons you'd think. Not because women are more maternal, more family-oriented. But rather, as one entrepreneur explains: "They say that women care more about the family, but I do not know if that is true...I think it has more to do with the self-control woman show in hard times. We know how to survive when men despair."

The very misogyny that keeps women in the background gives them the ability to succeed where men fail. That is encouraging, indeed.