PHOTO Abbie Trayler-Smith / Panos Pictures
I heard the great (if controversial) pundit Christopher Hitchens make this claim in a debate. He continued that if you give women control over their own lives, perhaps a small amount of credit, “The whole floor, culturally, socially, medically, economically will rise. It works every time.”
At the time, the two points seemed to my untrained ear unrelated: economic development and gender equality. But the evidence is clear.