Discrimination and poor education prevent women s entry into the workforce and increase poverty. Poverty exacerbates the exploitation of child labor, poor nutrition and inadequate health care, and abuse. All of these create conditions that severely hamper girls ability to grow up into healthy, productive women, and women s ability to participate in making the decisions which most affect their lives to enable them to take the lead in protecting themselves and their families. We have a new era in our hands. It is ours to hold, and uphold.
Women are absolutely and irradicably central to that process.
No longer condemned to bear the burden of the world, women now know what it is to break down barriers, to persevere in the face of prejudice and criticism, to find in work a worth they never knew they had, and to build the future. Women have always held up the world. Now they are learning that together they can change it. And when women are no longer required to shoulder the burden of the world, but stand on it equally, side by side with men, then indeed, they will hold up half the sky.