EDMONTON -- Women do two-thirds of the world's working hours but receive only one tenth of the income and own one hundredth of the property, the President of the Canadian International Development Agency said.
And women and children are the main victims of starvation in the world, Marcel Masse said Monday night in a speech to about 300 delgates to the Canadian Home Economics Association's annual conference.
'So badly have we arranged the world's food system that, although enough is produced to give everyone 3,000 calories per day which is more than the minimum necessity, hundreds of millions of people suffer from chronic malnutrition and large numbers are starving,' Masse said.
Every hour, he said, 'about 1,500 people will die, most of them women and children, through no particular fault of their own except they didn't have enough food or they had to drink contaminated water.'
During that same hour governments would spend $70 million on arms and $4 million on development aid. Canadians, he said, would contribute $200,000 an hour for aid but spend 'three or four times that amount to slake their thirst with alcoholic beverages.'
Masse said despite the doubling of primary education enrollment in Third World countries between 1960 and 1975 illiteracy rose 'in absolute terms by 55 million, four fifths of those women and girls.'
He said, 'Not only do women do two-thirds of the world's working hours, while receiving one tenth of the income and owning one-hundreth of the property, but they suffer two-thirds of the world's illiteracy even though it can be argued that the most effective single step to reduce the population explosion is to provide educational opportunities for a country's women and girls.'
The first step to closing the gap between the developed and developing nations was an awareness of the situation, Masse said. Only after that could the 'right action' be taken, he said.
But development aid must be aimed at more than building infrastructures and providing plants equipment which 'won't work if the people can't read, can't take care of the equipment,' said Masse. 'Unless you have social development, economic development cannot stick.'
