The fundamental missing piece of women's equality

Reposting: (originally posted 6/20/16) Still an issue.

I have thought and REthought this post.  I have changed my mind a million times. I decided that there is no good reason I can think of to write another "Debbie Downer"- style post, unless there are some practical solutions I can personally subscribe to on my own, ask you to join in, fuel your fire, and leave you feeling hopeful and encouraged.

So that's what I aim to do here.

I read an article written by Melinda Gates very recently, and it blew my mind, because it expresses the truth so clearly.

There's an old business maxim: what gets measured gets done. Well, it's true. Data drives results. Unless you can measure a problem—and thereby prove it exists—you can't start solving it.

One of the reasons that progress has been so slow for the world's poorest women is that we have very little data about them. There are still women who live and die entirely unrecorded. They leave behind no birth certificate, no death certificate, and no data about the struggles and challenges they faced—whether they had the chance to go to school or earn an income, whether they suffered from violence or disease, whether they died preventable deaths.

What little data we have about the world's poorest women is incomplete and, to put it bluntly, sexist.

Nowadays, we are in the dark about where most of our clothing comes from.  Even when it is created by our very own hands, the origins of and conditions from which our fabrics and supplies needed to make our clothing and accessories come are a mystery to us.

I have worked on my own, and for large and small companies, sometimes, discovering, much to my dismay, that something the company is doing is wildly unethical.  So, the truth is, once I know, I'm part of it.  As I sit here typing, I'm wearing a super cheap, perfectly fitting pair of jeans  from Old Navy, made of a fabric I've jokingly termed "barely denim", due to its whispery softness, but incomprehensible durability.  No way these jeans should have cost as little as they did.  But what do I KNOW for sure about them?  Nothing, really. 

Okay... looking at the label.  Made in Cambodia.  Although the RN# (factory number) is listed, it yields no results in my internet search.

So we can sit and complain about so many things, get lost in hand-wringing and lamenting the plight of the less fortunate, but it doesn't make anything happen.  We can all comfort ourselves by boycotting brands we know are operating unethically, we can hoist picket banners into the air, write to politicians, donate money to charities dedicated to fighting the exploitation of workers and children everywhere, or... we can reach out and be examples, leaders, and support to people we know, and people we don't... like this little girl:

There's some data we can measure.

What am I doing? I am helping kids. My help will be through a program that is teaching leadership skills to teenagers this summer. More on that later.