Unless there is recognition that women are most vulnerable... and

In the powerful and compassionate words of Stephen Lewis, we find a truth that resounds through the chambers of both reason and conscience: “Unless there is recognition that women are most vulnerable... and you do something about social and cultural equality for women, you're never going to defeat this pandemic.” These are not the words of mere rhetoric—they are the cry of a man who has looked upon the suffering of humanity and discerned its deepest wound: the persistent inequality that renders women the most afflicted when crisis strikes. In this quote, Lewis does not speak only of disease; he speaks of injustice. He tells us that no battle against illness, poverty, or war can be won unless we confront the ancient and corrosive inequities that chain half of humanity.

The origin of this quote lies in Lewis’s tenure as the United Nations Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, during the early years of the twenty-first century. As he journeyed through nations torn by both disease and poverty, he witnessed an undeniable pattern: women, especially young women and girls, bore the heaviest burden of the pandemic. They were the caretakers of the sick, the orphans of the dead, and often, the victims of violence and stigma. In village after village, he saw that inequality, not biology, was the true carrier of disease. Women were denied education, denied power, denied safety—and thus denied the means to protect themselves. His words, born from sorrow and outrage, were a plea to the world: you cannot heal the body of humanity while half of it remains wounded by inequality.

The ancients, too, understood that a people could never thrive while half its strength was subdued. In the wisdom of Lao Tzu, it was written that the world is held in balance by the harmony of the feminine and masculine—the yin and the yang. When one dominates and the other is diminished, chaos follows. Stephen Lewis echoes this same eternal law, but speaks it in the language of modern struggle. He reminds us that a nation cannot conquer a pandemic—nor ignorance, nor poverty—when it silences the wisdom and courage of its women. Disease, like darkness, finds its power in inequality; and equality, like light, is its truest cure.

Consider the story of Dr. Hawa Abdi, a Somali physician who built a hospital and refuge for tens of thousands of women and children amidst civil war. Her clinic was not merely a place of medicine—it was a fortress of equality. There, women were educated, protected, and given a voice. When militants once tried to seize her hospital, she stood before them unarmed and declared, “You will have to kill me first.” They turned away. In that moment, she embodied what Lewis proclaimed: that to heal society, one must first empower women—for they are the heartbeat of civilization. Where they are silenced, sickness spreads; where they are uplifted, life returns.

Lewis’s insight is not confined to Africa, nor to one disease—it is a reflection of a universal truth. Whether the crisis is pandemic, poverty, or climate change, women are too often left to bear its weight. They are the first to lose work when economies collapse, the last to eat when food is scarce, and the most vulnerable when violence or displacement tears through the land. Yet, paradoxically, they are also the first to rebuild, the first to nurture, and the first to lead with compassion when hope seems lost. The inequality of women, then, is not only a moral failure—it is the squandering of the world’s greatest resource: the resilience and wisdom of its daughters, mothers, and sisters.

In the ancient city-states of Greece, philosophers spoke of justice as the harmony of all parts working toward the common good. Stephen Lewis calls us to the same harmony—but on a global scale. He demands that we look beyond the symptoms of our suffering and confront the structures that sustain it. No vaccine or medicine, he warns, can cure a society poisoned by inequality. To truly defeat any pandemic—be it viral or social—we must heal the rift between men and women, between privilege and exclusion, between those who are heard and those who are silenced.

The lesson, then, is as timeless as it is urgent: to protect humanity, we must uplift its women. Every act of justice for women is an act of healing for the world. Let each person who hears these words commit to action—to educate girls, to defend the vulnerable, to challenge the customs that deny dignity. Let leaders remember that progress without equality is an illusion, that health without justice is incomplete. And let men, too, understand that to empower women is not to lose power, but to redeem it—transforming domination into partnership, and force into wisdom.

So let these words of Stephen Lewis endure as both warning and commandment: that equality is not a luxury—it is a weapon against despair. A society that honors its women will conquer every plague; a society that ignores them will perish from within. For as the ancients taught and Lewis reaffirmed, the world is one body, and when one part is wounded, all suffer. But when the hand of equality heals the wound, the entire body rises—stronger, fairer, and ready to face the dawn.