Women & Girls Are Disadvantaged
From an email from Rosemary McCarney, CEO, Plan Canada, just before International Women's Day 2009.
- Nearly 70 per cent of the 1.5 billion people living on $1 a day or less are female.
- Over 60 million girls of primary school age in the developing world are not in school.
- Girls are three times more likely to be malnourished than boys, because families often feed boys first.
- Each year, roughly two million girls between the ages of 5 and 15 are trafficked, sold or coerced into the sex trade.
- Globally, two-thirds of all new HIV infections among youth are in girls.