The State of the World's Children 2007 - Women and Children: The Double Dividend of Gender Equality

The State of the World’s Children 2007 reports on the lives of women around the world for a simple reason: Gender equality and the well-being of children go hand in hand. When women are empowered to live full and productive lives, children prosper. UNICEF’s experience also shows the opposite: When women are denied equal opportunity within a society, children suffer. Working within countries to achieve Millennium Development Goal 3 - promoting gender equality and empowering women - will reap the double dividend of bettering the lives of both women and children. It will also contribute to achieving all the other goals, from reducing poverty and hunger to saving children’s lives, improving maternal health, ensuring universal education, combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensuring environ- mental sustainability, and developing new and innovative partnerships for development.