International Womens Day

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

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Mr. DURBIN. Today, March 8, is International Women's Day. This day provides a special opportunity for us to reflect on the status of women throughout the world and to think about what we can do to improve the health and well-being of some of the world's most vulnerable women.

Today, I would like us to think about Uganda, where I sat on a porch with mothers who were HIV-positive. These mothers were gathering scrapbooks, photos, notes, and little memorabilia of their lives to leave to their children. Their children, playing in the yard, had already lost one parent, and were now about to lose a second.

I would like us to think about South Africa, where I saw women waiting for hours on wooden benches, inside a clinic made from old rail cars, in the hope that they might be sick enough to qualify for antiretroviral treatment for HIV.

And, I would like us to think about Bangladesh, where I saw women who had known nothing but poverty, but who, thanks to a tiny loan, had become entrepreneurs. They were offering cell phone service to their villages, made possible by their ownership of a single, solar-powered cell phone.

The stories of women like these from around the world are often stories of great sadness, but also stories of hope. The health and economic well-being of these women and their families are deeply intertwined. If we can improve one, we may be able to improve the other as well.

The connection between health and economic well-being is clearly apparent in two areas of international assistance: fighting HIV/AIDS, and providing family planning.

Women are now the face of AIDS in many parts of the world. In sub-Saharan Africa, 57 percent of those infected with HIV are women. Younger women are at particular risk. They are three times more likely than young men to be infected. This striking statistic, according to Stephen Lewis, the United Nations Secretary General's Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, ``is unprecedented in the history of the pandemic and . . . perhaps the most ominous warning of what is yet to come.''

HIV/AIDS exploits and widens the inequities that make women more vulnerable. Women may have fewer economic opportunities, making them dependent on others for simple survival. When a family's resources are limited, any available money may go first for care and treatment for the men. Where women do not have rights to property, a husband's death can leave a widow and her children with literally nothing except infection with HIV. Women are also too often at risk for sexual violence and coercion.

The list of problems is long. It is clear that to win the fight against HIV/AIDS, we must address the many and wide-ranging impacts of the disease on women. Our strategies to fight HIV/AIDS should include approaches such as microcredit programs that provide women with small loans. These loans, often as small as $10, enable women to start businesses to sustain themselves and their families. We should also support efforts to keep girls in school, using education's effectiveness as a ``social vaccine'' against HIV infection. We should work to make prevention, care, and treatment accessible to women. We must address the problem of gender-based violence and intimidation.

And, as part of our strategy, we should also support promising women-centered technologies such as microbicides. This is why I am a cosponsor of the Microbicides Development Act being introduced today. This bill calls on the Federal Government to accelerate and coordinate research and development of microbicides.

Family planning is another area that can have important benefits for women's health and economic well being. The World Bank has called family planning ``a development success story'' because it contributes so greatly not just to women's health and opportunities, but also to the social and economic development of entire societies. Family planning improves economic and educational opportunities for women and their families. It also has a direct effect on health.

Worldwide, over half a million women die each year from pregnancy or delivery. Family planning makes pregnancy safer by reducing unintended pregnancies and by allowing couples to space births, giving mothers' bodies more time to recover between pregnancies. Spacing births 3 to 5 years apart can prevent the deaths of women and children. It decreases a mother's risk of dying from childbirth by 2.5 times, and also decreases by 2.5 times the baby's risk of dying before the age of five.

Unfortunately, many couples still lack access to family planning care. Worldwide, an estimated 200 million women want to delay the birth of their next child or stop childbearing altogether, but lack access to effective contraceptive methods.

Fully funding this unmet need for contraceptives could reduce abortions by 22 million, infant deaths by 1.4 million, and pregnancy-related deaths by 142,000. Improving access to family planning care is also a wise economic investment. Studies from Mexico, Thailand, Egypt, and Vietnam have found that every dollar spent on family planning saves $8 to $31 in government expenditures.

The United States has been a leading supporter of family planning programs since the 1960s. For family planning's many benefits to women's health and lives, I hope we will continue our leadership in this area.

Today, on International Women's Day, we have an opportunity to recognize the progress that has been made in advancing the health and economic well-being of women. We also have an obligation to renew our commitment to providing the care that is needed to help some of the world's most vulnerable women and their families.

When we face challenges, we must not be deterred. When we experience success, we ought not to become complacent. Winston Churchill reminds us, ``Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.'' The women that I have met in Uganda, South Africa, and Bangladesh have all had the courage to continue. We too must continue our efforts to improve the health and lives of women around the world.

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