Posts Tagged Development

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Quick Hit: Companies Should Try Actually Supporting Impoverished Women

This week on The Ladies’ Finger — a feminist website you guys should absolutely follow — Sneha Rajaram takes down global consulting behemoth McKinsey on what it really means to support the financial lives of impoverished women in the Global South (India specifically).

This week on The Ladies’ Finger — a feminist website you guys should absolutely follow — Sneha Rajaram takes down global consulting behemoth McKinsey on what it really means to support the financial lives of impoverished women in ...

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What you need to know about the indigenous women protesting in Guatemala

Late last month, one thousand indigenous women took to the streets of Guatemala City to protest the violent militarization of their communities fueled by a powerful Guatemalan cement company. Their persistent and courageous organizing has helped to highlight the regular abuses of power in Guatemala and the rest of Central America that disproportionately hurt indigenous and rural communities. 

Late last month, one thousand indigenous women took to the streets of Guatemala City to protest the violent militarization of their communities fueled by a powerful Guatemalan cement company. Their persistent and courageous organizing has helped to ...

Happy Birthday to the 7 billionth person!

Have you heard? The world population hits 7 billion today!

Conflicting reports put the 7 billionth baby as having been born in a few different places (The Philippines! India! China!) but it matters little to me: for the most part the milestone is symbolic.

So .. what of it? Behind all the rhetoric and symbolism, what does this milestone really mean for us, for our families, and for our quality of life? What kind of world is the 7 billionth baby in being born into?

Lots of people have weighed in on what this all means.

As Miriam pointed out back in July, coverage of global issues related to population, health, and ...

Have you heard? The world population hits 7 billion today!

Conflicting reports put the 7 billionth baby as having been born in a few different places (The Philippines! India! China!) but it matters ...

Where hip gear and global economic development meet

My column this week is on the one-to-one businesses, TOMS being the most well-known, sprouting up all over the place. But before you go shoe shopping with a big, guiltless smile on your well-intentioned face, read a bit about some of the important distinctions between different types of approaches. An excerpt:

To begin with, giving a kid a pair of shoes manufactured elsewhere undermines the economic vitality of that kid’s community, as many bloggers have noted. Further, as Saundra Schimmelpfennig, a blogger at Good Intentions Are Not Enough, points out, shoes are already manufactured fairly cheaply in countries like Argentina, where Mycoskie was traveling when he decided to start TOMS. Expanding the manufacturing industry in poor countries is often seen ...

My column this week is on the one-to-one businesses, TOMS being the most well-known, sprouting up all over the place. But before you go shoe shopping with a big, guiltless smile on your well-intentioned face, read ...

The poverty lab

I’ve been trying to catch up on my New Yorkers the past few days; I don’t love it’s elitism, but totally dig that it’s still publishing long form profiles and the like. The fact that I’m just getting to the May 17 edition should tell you something about my spring/summer. Anyway, forgive me for being way late to this party, but I wanted to make sure our community knew about the work of Esther Duflo, a professor of development economics. Ian Parker wrote a really fascinating profile of Duflo, the co-founder of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at M.I.T., which runs field experiments that measure different ways to save the world. (Note: a subscription is ...

I’ve been trying to catch up on my New Yorkers the past few days; I don’t love it’s elitism, but totally dig that it’s still publishing long form profiles and the like. The fact that I’m just ...