Hadas now supports her family with a small business. As her reading skills improve, she hopes to secure a job with regular, reliable income. World Vision is helping tens of thousands of women like Hadas worldwide through adult literacy classes. Poverty Women make up half the world's population. Yet they own just 1 percent of its wealth.
Females also are the most rapidly growing group among the impoverished.
Most of the estimated 100 million homeless people around the world are women and children. As many as 600 million women and children live in inadequate, unhealthy shelters. Every day, some 50,000 people, mostly women and children, die because of poor shelter, polluted water, and bad sanitation. Women have few avenues out of poverty. Though they represent the majority of the world's food producers and contribute significantly to economic life everywhere, women are largely excluded from economic decisions.