Invited to speak in a class on Globalization at Fairfield University, I used the opportunity to highlight Vital Voices Women Can campaign, which aims to persuade individuals, entities, and even governments why investing in women will improve our world. It is necessary to move beyond the empowerment of women as the right thing to do toward arguing forcefully, and with evidence, that investing women in a smart strategy, a lucrative strategy, and one that is everyone’s best interests.

Students posed several challenging questions. First, a student inquired about whether working on women’s rights in Islamic nations generates resistance. Without my colleagues from the Middle East & North Africa program to speak to the topic specifically, I spoke to the detrimental ways in which Islam is interpreted so as to disempower women. Pointing to Islamic nations like Afghanistan and Pakistan where women achieved enormous strides in the decades prior to the rise of fundamentalists, I encouraged students to focus on uncovering the lessons we can learn from those societies rather than on the narrow minority that casts a shadow on the potential of Islam, and all religions for that matter, to generate progress, encourage goodness, and promote peace.

Second, students challenged whether gender equity was a realistic - or desirable - goal. In traditional societies, one student asked, will not women inevitably forego professional opportunities in the workplace to undertake work related to home and family? Why is gender parity in the workforce a goal if women may otherwise - legitimately so - opt to raise families as their primary responsibility? A professor attending one of the lectures pointed out that the United Nations had indeed achieved near gender parity in hiring among non-political staff. Is that a representation of our goal being reached? No, I responded. The point is not equal representation at the workplace but rather equal pay for equal work. What we know is that there is a pay gap between men and women, and gender is the factor that is shown to be significant. Closing the gap is relevant, not merely achieving equity in hiring.

Questions offer an opportunity to dig deeper. As the best teachers repeatedly assure their students, there are no bad questions. The importance is in facilitating a dialogue and advancing the course of the discussion. Please keep the questions coming as we continue the Women Can campaign to make the case once and for all that investments in women are a purposeful, impactful, and lucrative endeavor for each of us as individuals as well as for local, national, and regional communities.