From Wanting a Husband to Wanting a Career

Dr. Geeta Rao Gupta, who grew up in India, remembers having no ambition as a teenager. She wasn't a good student in middle school or high school, and had no aspirations to succeed or do anything much with her life.

Her apathy was so strong that in the eighth grade she asked her mother for a simple request.

"I said to my mother she should just find me a husband and get me married because I didn't think I was capable of much," Gupta says.

Her mother's response was swift but equally simple. "She said, 'What kind of husband do you want?'"

Someone like her dad, Gupta answered.

"And my mother said, 'Ah, somebody like Dad would want an educated wife, or at least somebody with a high school education.'"

That conversation was a turning point in Gupta's life.

"My mother very cleverly sought to motivate me—in the short term—to finish high school, and in that short period of time, I found myself."

During the high school years, Gupta says, she discovered what interested her and what she wanted to learn.

"All of a sudden the trajectory in my life changed because I had finished high school."

As a result, Gupta says she never thought again about dropping out. She went onto study for a Bachelor's Degree, a Master's Degree and then a Ph.D. and has "never stopped since."

Today, as president of the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), a leading global authority on women's role in development, Gupta realizes how fortunate she was to get an education.

"I came from India where the education system is great for the elite."

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Helping Poor Girls and Women Through Her Work

"Now for my work I get to visit schools that are available for the poor and the quality is so bad and the conditions are so poor. Yet I know I went into a foreign labor market and succeeded. But those kids can never do the same, because their quality of schooling is so poor."

"You have to visit the girls in India. They've got bright eyes. The spark is still there. But their potential is limited because of the education they have access to and that's tragic."

Gupta says there's clear evidence to show how important education is for girls.

"Yet here we are in 2005 and this is the first of the Millennium Development Goals [international targets to be reached by the year 2015] and yet we are so far behind," she says.

"This is a big area—where we know what to do. We know what it takes. We even know how much money and what strategies will work at the country level. But the money is not there and the resources are not there to meet the goals and that's tragic."

But education is just one of the needs that will allow girls and women to have the same rights, opportunities, responsibilities and choices in life that boys and men consider their birthright.

Women and Health

She says guaranteeing women their sexual and reproductive rights and health is important.

"To think that in this day and age, there's still half a million women of dying of totally preventable causes related to childbirth and pregnancy is unconscionable in the 21st century. We have the technology. We know how to do it right. And that health systems in the developing world haven't been strengthened over time and are able to provide this basic necessity for women to reproduce and have children in a healthy way is to me shocking."

Gupta says as part of that, women also need access to family planning services, and adds that boys and girls need access to full information on sexuality and reproductive health.

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Women and Property

Property and inheritance rights are another basic need, says Gupta.

"Today in many parts of the world, women cannot inherit or own their own property equal to their brothers and husbands. And without economic assets you cannot expect an individual to climb out of poverty.

"You know economic assets protect you from economic shocks. It enables you to take some economic risks. And in the context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa, where women don't have the right to own land and property, the impact of the epidemic when a spouse dies is much more severe. They are left abandoned and it's likely to perpetuate a cycle of infection and disease because they are left with no alternative but to sell sex, in order to feed their children."

Women and Violence

Gupta also identified ending violence against women as a priority.

"In talking to women who are victims of violence, it's absolutely abhorrent to me to imagine that such a practice still exists and that the acceptability level of violence against women persists—both among women and men."

"It's almost taken to be an indicator of a man's love for his wife that he beats her occasionally and it has to stop."

Women and Decision Making

Gupta also believes women need to be given more opportunity to participate in decision making at all levels in any country.

Until that happens, she says, "We are never going to see the changes that should be brought about."

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