Four years ago, while on a business trip, I came across a picture in The Economist that drastically changed my life. It was a picture of a 10-year-old Afghan girl being married to a 40-year-old Afghan man. I was of course aware that child marriages were an issue, but there was something about this picture that startled me and made me think. I couldn’t get the image out of my head. Why was this wedding taking place? What forces a “child” to be in such a situation? How and why would the family of the girl agree to this? I kept asking myself all these questions.
After that, I started thinking about all the problems women face globally, whether they involve child marriage, education, health, money, discrimination, violence, access to capital, the glass ceiling, and more. I chose to concentrate on financial problems women can encounter – not only because my background is in finance, but also because I truly believe that a lack of economic freedom is the root cause of many gender-related problems.stions.
