There are clear geographical and developmental differences to the types of problems women face, but the fundamental problem of gender discrimination is the same.

-- --Gertrude Mongella, Tanzania, 1995

• represent 70 percent of the worlds' 1.3 billion people living in extreme poverty.
  
• Comprise two-thirds of the world's illiterate population.
  
• work longer hours than men
  
• still earn less than men, even at equivalent levels of education.
  
• hold only 13 percent of the seats in the world's parliaments
  
• are, in many developing countries, denied the right to inherit, own or manage land and other property. As a result, they are also denied credit and banking privileges
  
  
  

• In 1950 there were 38 million more boys than girls enrolled in primary and secondary levels of education; currently there are 82 million more boys than girls enrolled.
  
• Every year about one million girls, mostly in Asia, are forced into prostitution
  
• In developing countries, more than half the women over the age of 25 have never been to school.
  
• In the US, there are three times as many shelters for neglected animals than there are shelters for battered women
  
• Less than half of the world's poorest women who are age 15 and older have had enough schooling to be able to read and write. On average they have spent a total of one year in school, one tenth as much as their sisters in the richest fifth of the global population. Their yearly income averages $250, about 1 percent of the income of those in the richest fifth.
  
• Of the 2,500 highest paid executives in the Fortune 500 companies in the US, less than 1 percent are women
  
• Of the 190 independent states in the world, less than 1 percent of the presidents or prime ministers are women.
  
• Of the 154 ambassadors to the United States in Washington DC, 3 percent are women.
  
• Americans spend $8 billion a year on cosmetics -- $2 billion more than the estimated annual total needed to provide basic education for everyone in the world.