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10/13/2005:

"Only greater rights for women can end poverty, warns UN"

The war on poverty cannot be won unless much greater efforts are made to give women equality, says the annual UN Population Fund report, published yesterday.
The report calls for government action to free women from the poverty and ignorance often forced upon them by cultural confines in many countries, which has an economic as well as a social toll.

"I am here today to say that world leaders will not make poverty history until they make gender discrimination history," said the UNFPA's executive director, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, at the report's launch. "We cannot make poverty history until we stop violence against women and girls. We cannot make poverty history until women enjoy their full social, cultural, economic, and political rights."
guardian.co.uk