'The Girl Effect'

Surfing YouTube for an a clip about Creigh Deeds after the Primary, I came across an ad for "The Girl Effect." Naturally, I was curious. Upon clicking the ad I was redirected to www.girleffect.org. This is a review of what I saw.

First, I was given a statement, "The World Is A Mess," and asked to "Agree" or "Disagree." If you click "Disagree" you are met with a giant flashing question mark, then the one word question "Really?" Then another statement, "There are 600 million girls who would disagree with you," rolls across the screen. Your only option after this is to click "Ok. Maybe the world is kind of a mess." This redirects you to a movie. (If you originally clicked "Agree" you are instantly redirected to this movie. The movie is the following:

Now, as you can imagine (considering I'm writing this here), I have some problems with the presumed 'cause' and 'effect' scenario presented in that video. It's not that helping out poor girls (or the poor in general) is bad. But, misrepresentation of facts will not necessarily achieve the intended goal (as people like me are less inclined to like your organization).

My first problem would normally be with the webpage making me agree that the world is a mess but I'll ignore that little difficulty. So, my first problem will come when the word "Girl" is surrounded by the words "flies, husband, baby, hunger [and] HIV." And we are asked to pretend that we can fix this picture. It seems, to me at least, the words "husband" and "baby" are being associated with "flies, hunger [and] HIV." I could concede that "baby" might be associated with a negative, such as flies or hunger or HIV, if we are to concede that the belief is that people should be married before having children. (This I would assume if this video was presented from a 'conservative' to 'moderate' perspective). But, I find it hard to believe anyone aside from radical feminists would say "husband" (or "wife," for that matter) was a negative. I simply fail to see how being able to be married is a negative.

My second problem comes about when the video first reads "lets put her in a school uniform" and quickly follows with "give her a loan to buy a cow." Why, exactly, would we need to spend money to educate her when her goal is to "buy a cow" to "sell the milk" to "help her family." Wouldn't it be more productive to spend that money to buy a few cows, donate them, and teach her how to milk them (and, if she is unaware, how to set up shop to sell the milk)? And, how does it happen that "pretty soon, her cow becomes a herd?" I was not aware of the asexual reproductive abilities of cows. Unless, of course, we mean that she makes enough money to buy a herd which, as I already said, proves we wasted money sending her to school instead of buying her a herd in the first place.

My third problem is that even if we do send her to school, where I assume she'd learn business practices, and she does get the herd of cows why would she bother bringing clean water to the village? If we've taught her well she knows the concept of supply and demand. Here are the conditions, assumptions and the following logic:

Condition 1: People need to drink.
Condition 2: There's no clean water in the village.
Condition 3: She'd have a monopoly on the milk industry for the village.
Condition 4: She makes enough of a profit off of one cow to pay back her loan and buy an entire herd.
Assumption 1: There's no source of drink other than dirty water or milk.
Conclusion 1: She can sell milk at whatever price she wants.
Conclusion 2: People will be compelled to drink milk, so long as the price isn't outrageous, because the water is not safe to drink.
Conclusion 3: She will make more money by not investing in village infrastructure to bring clean water to the village because she is already making more than enough money to sustain her herd size, whose lives are shortened because of the bad water, while actually generating excess profit that would be eliminated by supplying the village with water (unless she charged the village for that as well).

So, in reality, she'd become the de facto leader of the village because of her almost complete control of the fate of the villagers. Obviously, to solidify her control she'd want to bring water to the village and charge the villagers for its use, thereby gaining utter control over the fate of the villagers. Thereby, she could exploit the other villagers to a lesser degree than one that would result in the reduction in size of the village either through lack of births or flight. (It's like that scene from Quantum of Solace where James & Camille have discovered that Dominic Greene has complete control over the water supply in Bolivia). (Admittedly, to be sustainable, both scenarios require that the people being exploited make some sort of profit elsewhere in order to assist in the enrichment by the oppressors).

I do agree with the conclusion though. As the girl wields an increasing amount of economic power her sociopolitical power increases, resulting in the men of the village 'respecting' her (though probably in a different sense than the video originally intended). But, I doubt she'd help convince people girls are valuable. Instead, she'd most likely start a dynasty and work towards eliminating real and potential threats to her power and status. This would result in a life trajectory that would probably closely follow Junianus Justinus' account of Elissa (Carthage's Dido), in which the girl gains power over the village and is then drawn into regional conflicts with powers she cannot match, resulting, ultimately in her downfall.

If, however, we give the girl quite the gift of altruism or, alternatively, a poor education (so she does not figure out how easily she could exploit the other villagers), we can reasonably expect the village economy to pickup and a lowering in the unemployment rate. I'm not sure that convinces the villagers that girls are "valuable" but it might go a ways towards convincing them that girls are not chattel, not to be bought and sold. And while milk will certainly result in "healthier babies," cows in "food," milk and cows in "commerce" and clean water in "sanitation" the other goals will not go hand-in-hand; "peace, lower HIV, education and stability." For while there will be greater stability and peace in the village itself, the prosperity of the village will almost certainly attract outside powers who will attack and intimidate the village and villagers, given that many third world countries are relatively unable to ensure the safety of their citizens and its unlikely the villagers will be spending their extra cash bulking up militarily and training a militia to ensure their own safety. Further, the education of one girl won't amount to a hill of beans in a third world village unless she can pull of an economic success story and gain considerable economic and, as a result, sociopolitical influence, which will give her credence to use her knowledge to inform others (about issues like HIV, I assume). Then again, it's hard to argue that knowledge itself will stop the spread of HIV (if it did, then why would it be such an epidemic even in 1st world countries?).

Admittedly, if this project were taking place somewhere not prone to complete lawlessness (I'm looking at you Congo and Sudan) then there might be some chance of success. Someplace like India, in one of the more rural villages, where random attacks by militias are not commonplace, might be the best location for a project designed to both promote women and, ultimately, improve the economy.

Yet, the target is "600 million girls" so I've got to assume the ones in the Congo and Sudan are targeted as well. And the end result will be, intentional or not, the artificial enrichment and advancement of certain people over others. This is going to create some form of resentment, though the exact form it takes will depend on the native culture. Further, countries where this project is most successful are going to be ones that are already pretty stable and once these countries advance to or near 1st world status they are going to be the target of their less stable neighbors. The motive for groups seeking power in these countries will be, as Cato's saying goes, "Carthago delenda est." Of course, we already see this pattern in places like Israel, where a, relatively, stable society has become the target for groups like Hezbollah.

To close, I'd like to recount the 'rape (abduction) of the Sabine women' in relation to this project. As I've said above, a prosperous village in an unstable region will be the target of nearly every other group seeking power and advancement. If the project succeeds we might then see a modern abduction like that of the Sabines for rumors will spread about the women of the successful village being the drive behind the success. Any warlord worth his salt and in the region will play the part of Romulus. He will work to abduct the women and, like the Romans did to the Sabine men, kill them, possibly in the process of abduction. Therefore, the result would not necessarily be sustained economic growth and stability but, rather, temporary economic growth and stability punctuated by the violent overthrow and eventual destruction of the society (for who is foolish enough to think the 'warlord' will trust the women and successfully set up a parallel economic success? And who is foolish enough to think another, more powerful, warlord won't then move in on the first?).

So, while I certainly think this is a worthwhile project and womens rights should be encouraged I think that the project directors need to be especially careful where they set their aim. Obviously, aiding in the creation of a future conflict or exploitation of peoples is not something anyone with such good intentions would want. Yet, it is certainly a risk. And, while I may not have provided modern evidence to support my claims, I believe the ancient accounts more than sufficient insights into human nature and more than able to justify my concerns. Further, it hard to imagine that all of 600 million girls this program hopes to help will be as altruistic as this video, disingenuously (probably by mistake), makes the viewer want to believe.

Natch Greyes is a Democrat running for Senate in 2020. His campaign platform may be found at natchgreyes.com and his other writings may be found here.