Ivanka Trump: Empower women to foster freedom

On Thursday President Trump will sign a memorandum establishing the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative, or W-GDP. This new initiative will for the first time coordinate America’s commitment to one of the most undervalued resources in the developing world -- the talent, ambition and genius of women. This initiative aims to help 50 million women in developing countries realize their economic potential by 2025.

President Trump’s 2017 National Security Strategy of the United States recognized women’s critical role in achieving global peace and prosperity. Research suggests that the more women are excluded from full participation in a country’s economy, the likelier it is that the country will be involved in conflict and respond to a threat with immediate violence. When women are free to thrive, they bring national stability, as well as more jobs and economic growth. Expanding women’s economic participation has the potential to boost global economic output by an additional $12 trillion by 2025.

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This number represents far more than an economic boom -- it represents millions of lives full of promise: mothers who could provide for their children, daughters who could be the first to graduate from high school, and young women who could start businesses and create jobs. This is the future we can and must achieve together.

W-GDP establishes an innovative new fund at the U.S. Agency for International Development to support proposals that enable women to succeed in the economy. The president has directed USAID to allocate an initial $50 million for this new fund. This fund will implement the administration’s new strategy of foreign assistance, which emphasizes investments that produce measurable results and help recipient countries become self-reliant. It will also facilitate complementary private-sector investments to achieve our shared goals.

To continue reading Ivanka Trump's column in The Wall Street Journal, click here.