Explores the international movement for women's rights.
In 1994, 179 government leaders attending the Cairo International Conference on Population and Development signed a groundbreaking agreement aimed at improving the lives of women worldwide. Balancing Acts -- the first in a duo of Life programs made in collaboration with women broadcasters and producers around the world to mark the 10th anniversary of that conference -- explores how women from very different cultures, often faced with extremes of inequality, are taking on the status quo. Individual stories look at how Afghani women refugees are returning to pick up the pieces of their lives in Kabul; the feisty female entrepreneurs of Nigeria known as "Mama Benz" who, despite owning an estimated 50 per cent of the country's small businesses, are denied recognition of their contribution to the economy; a teenager battling purdah to get an education in Pakistan; and the "inherited widows" who are challenging convention in Kenya. Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and UN Commissioner for Human Rights, provides an overview of the state of women's rights worldwide-and why they are so crucial to social and economic development.
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