Tuesday, May 13, 2008

on the One Woman Initiative

Apparently the State Department is launching a program, the One Woman Initiative, to support women's empowerment worldwide... but especially in Muslim countries. Benazir Bhutto was the inspiration for the fund, the idea being that empowering female moderates in Muslim countries is as important as empowering male moderates. Great.

Carly Fiorina, Sheila Johnson and Farooq Kathwari are the co-chairs of the initiative. All business people, none of them Muslim women. Look, I don't care for tokenism ... but if you have three co-chairs, isn't there room for one Muslim woman if that's your target outreach group? And if you already have three co-chairs ... why not have four?

Maybe I am missing something... they are 2/3 female and 1/3 Muslim. Could be worse.

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