We know we cannot achieve our twin goals of ending poverty and

Listen well, children of the earth, to the words of Sri Mulyani Indrawati, a leader who has walked the halls of power and the fields of hardship alike. She has declared: “We know we cannot achieve our twin goals of ending poverty and boosting shared prosperity without ending poverty and creating equality for women and girls.” This is no idle proclamation, but a truth carved from the very bones of humanity’s struggle. For what are prosperity and freedom if half of humankind is bound, silenced, or denied their share of light?

The wisdom of her words flows from an eternal law: no house can stand if one of its pillars is broken. To fight against poverty without lifting the burdens from the backs of women is to wage a battle with one arm bound. To speak of shared prosperity while half the people are excluded is to utter falsehoods. For women are not merely a part of the story of nations—they are the mothers, the laborers, the teachers, the healers, the dreamers. To deny them equality is to rob the world of half its strength, half its creativity, half its hope.

Consider the tale of Wangari Maathai of Kenya, who founded the Green Belt Movement. She began by planting trees with rural women, giving them both wages and dignity. Her work restored forests, lifted families, and empowered thousands of women who had long been voiceless. In giving women tools and opportunity, she did not merely end their poverty—she reshaped the destiny of her nation. Here is the living proof of Indrawati’s words: when women rise, societies flourish, and prosperity is no longer the prize of the few but the inheritance of the many.

The origin of this teaching lies in the long history of human blindness. For centuries, kings and rulers thought wealth could be built while women remained confined, uneducated, or unseen. Empires fell, and nations stagnated, because they silenced half their people. The wisdom of Indrawati is to pierce this illusion: that true progress is indivisible, and no society can climb to the mountaintop of prosperity if women are left in the valley.

This teaching is also a warning. Beware, O nations, of boasting wealth while your daughters are uneducated, while your mothers toil unseen, while your sisters are paid less for the same labor. Such prosperity is but a mirage—it glitters for the few while the many thirst. Only when the chains are broken and equality given can prosperity become shared prosperity, flowing like water that nourishes all fields, not only the gardens of the powerful.

The lesson is clear: if you would labor for justice, labor first for the women and the girls. Give them education, for an educated girl is a nation’s brightest lamp. Give them equal wages, for a woman’s labor is no less sacred than a man’s. Give them safety, for fear destroys potential. And give them voices in council, for wisdom speaks in many tongues. In this way, the fight against poverty will not limp but run, and prosperity will not be hollow but whole.

So carry this teaching into your lives, O heirs of tomorrow. When you speak of justice, remember the women beside you. When you build prosperity, build it on foundations of equality. Do not be deceived by false wealth that shines while women weep. Instead, labor for a world where mothers and daughters rise in strength, and in their rising, lift nations with them. For only then will the twin goals—the ending of poverty and the spreading of shared prosperity—become not a dream, but a destiny fulfilled.