Reeta Roy on creating economic opportunity for women

Transcript

REETA ROY: We know from data that higher levels of equality translate into higher levels of economic growth.

[Inequality is logo. A graphic black equal sign with an orange slash through it. #InequalityIs. Reeta Roy, president and CEO, The Mastercard Foundation. An Asian woman with short hair, wearing a red blouse.]

I grew up in a developing country. I grew up in Malaysia. So many women, and so many mothers, including my own mother, fought for my education. A common story I hear at every place I go. Economies can’t sustain themselves if half your population don’t have access to education, don’t have access to markets, don’t have access to land tenure. Women face incredible hurdles in this journey to equality. And it can’t be a journey just born by women. It has to be a journey where we involve our brothers, our fathers, our husbands, our partners. Each actor needs to ask themselves, “What can we do and what can we do differently?” And so, when I think about this work, and I think about what it means to overcome inequality, I really think about this as the restoration of dignity. And it’s the restoration of hope, it’s the restoration of confidence, so people activate their own agency and change the world.

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