The true wealth of a society is not measured in currency or material assets, but in how the women of that society are treated. Be it education, healthcare, career choices, or life choices, when women are not free to make their own choices, the underlying society is not free and it is not truly capable of realizing its collective potential.
The life we sustain by our choices are our own. This is nowhere truer than in a capitalist democracy where our choices drive the market and our civil society through our vote and subsequent participation in the democratic process.
Civil society relies on a functional social contract. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a seminal thinker from the European Renaissance Period believed that “The general WILL of the people should direct the state towards the Common Good. Hence the good of the community is more important than individual interests”.