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Women's charities

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This page summarizes our work on areas of international aid that are especially relevant to helping and empowering women. For each area, we list the strongest charity/charities we have found. Areas are listed in order of how promising we find these charities.

Reproductive health

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A woman in a developing country is 97 times more likely to die as a result of pregnancy than a woman in a developed country. Some charities work to reduce maternal mortality through interventions including better primary care facilities; others work to improve women's access to birth control. Our top recommendation in this area is:

  • Population Services International (PSI) promotes and distributes condoms and other contraceptives to help reduce unwanted pregnancies, as well as prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. For more, see our full review of PSI.

Also see our report on maternal mortality.

Economic empowerment

The Small Enterprise Foundation,, our highest-rated economic empowerment organization has clients who are predominantly women.2 We recommend:

  • Small Enterprise Foundation (SEF), a microfinance institution operating primarily in the Limpopo province of South Africa. SEF shows a strong focus on collecting the information necessary to assess its social impact, including (a) data on how many clients are dropping out of the program (and why), and (b) data on whether SEF is succeeding in its attempt to target people with very low incomes. Nevertheless, we have concerns about SEF's social impact, particularly regarding its substantial dropout rates.

Also see our report on economic empowerment.

Education

Charities run a large variety of education programs in the developing world. We feel that all these programs have potential to be helpful when carried out appropriately, but none have strong track records of reliably improving student performance (or life outcomes).

Our top recommendation in this cause is Pratham, an India-based education charity that has shown an unusual commitment to rigorously evaluating its programming and generating better knowledge about what works. (See our brief review of Pratham.)

More at our discussion of developing-world education.

Other causes

Many other women-focused charities work to improve and enforce laws protecting women. We have not yet researched these areas. If you would like to stay posted on the progress of our research, you can sign up for updates using the box to the right above.

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