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. In most societies, they lack equal access to, and control over, various means of production, including land, capital and technology. Their work is nearly always paid and valued less than men's. Over the past two decades, small-business loan programs have been successful around the world in improving the income of women and their families. Bangladesh's Grameen Bank pioneered the concept, and now reaches 2 million women.