Our economies are built on the backs of all this unpaid labor that women do.

Having children made us look differently at all these things that we take for granted, like taking your child to get a vaccine against measles or polio.

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

I've travelled extensively in the last 16 years - to slums in Bangladesh, to townships in South Africa, to all kinds of places in India, etc. When I would go and talk to villagers about something like vaccines, if I stayed long enough, the women would bring the conversation around and say: "What about this family planning tool? We can't keep having the number of children we're having."

All lives have an equal value.

In the developing world, it's about time that women are on the agenda. For instance, 80 percent of small-subsistence farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are women, and yet all the programs in the past were predominantly focused on men.

Women speaking up for themselves and for those around them is the strongest force we have to change the world.