Contraceptives unlock one of the most dormant, but potentially powerful assets in development: women as decision-makers. When women have the power to make choices about their families, they tend to decide precisely what demographers, economists, and development experts recommend. They invest in the long-term human capital of their families.

I realized that the only way to get into a good college was to be valedictorian or salutatorian. So that was my goal.

We also ought to recognize that unpaid labor falls predominantly to women. The other thing I would do in countries like the U.S. is to show more men, even in TV ads, doing household work. Only two percent of ads show men doing chores, and yet we know they actually do several hours of it in real life. Those images affect young boys and girls.

Helping people doesn't have to be an unsound financial strategy.

Despite the debunking, you have a small group in the last five years that hasn't wanted to vaccinate their children, for instance, for measles. Then, all of sudden, we got an outbreak of measles and kids were starting to die from measles.

I felt suicidal. I couldn't stop crying. I remember thinking, wouldn't it be great if the car crashed and I died?

All women, everywhere, have the same hopes: we want to be self-sufficient and create better lives for ourselves and our loved ones.