Saudi Arabia, UAE Donate $100 Million To Women’s Fund Proposed By Ivanka Trump
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are donating $100 million to a women’s empowerment fund proposed by Ivanka Trump, President Donald Trump’s elder daughter and a senior White House adviser.
World Bank President Jim Yong Kim announced the contribution to the World Bank Women Entrepreneurs Fund at a meeting in Riyadh between Ivanka Trump and 15 Saudi women Sunday, during the president’s trip to Saudi Arabia.
Ivanka Trump helped inspire the fund, which will be led by the World Bank. Early reports had suggested she would take a more active fundraising role, but it was later reported that she would not be directly involved in raising funds or deciding how the money would be spent.
“This is really a stunning achievement,” Kim said Sunday, according to USA Today. “I’ve never seen anything come together so quickly, and I really have to say that Ivanka’s leadership has been tremendous.”
The donation is aimed at efforts for women in the Middle East, The Wall Street Journal reports, and the fund will support women who start businesses.
Trump first announced her plans for the fund in April, raising questions about whether it would cause conflicts of interest given her role in the White House, and drawing comparisons to the Clinton Foundation’s controversial donors. A White House official said in April that Ivanka Trump would not solicit funds or have any authority over the World Bank project, contradicting earlier reports.
During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump attacked Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for her work with the nonprofit Clinton Foundation, which raises funds for projects including entrepreneurship programs and efforts to fight HIV and AIDS.
A Trump campaign ad released in October criticized the “staggering amounts of cash pouring into the Clinton Foundation from criminals, dictators, countries that hate America.”
The foundation received contributions from both the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, two countries that have oppressive laws restricting women’s rights.
Saudi Arabia bans women from driving and requires them to get permission from a male guardian to travel, marry and exit prison.
Women “may be required to provide guardian consent in order to work or access healthcare,” according to the organization Human Rights Watch. “Women regularly face difficulty conducting a range of transactions without a male relative, from renting an apartment to filing legal claims.”
At Sunday’s meeting with a group of Saudi women in top professional positions, Ivanka Trump said Saudi Arabia’s progress on women’s issues has been “very encouraging” but “there’s still a lot of work to be done.” She called herself a “female leader within the Trump administration” and spoke about issues like affordable child care, the pay gap and paid family leave, according to The Washington Post.
Some Saudi activists criticized Trump and the women she met with for not doing enough to address the serious issues facing their gender.
Activist Loujain al-Hathloul, who was jailed in 2014 for driving, told the Post that her concern with meetings like the one on Sunday “is that they show these women as powerful and making an impact, making a change. But in real life, they’ve been given these opportunities by the men. They did not fight for them.”
In the U.S., Ivanka Trump has been criticized for paying lip service to issues facing women while failing to influence her father to take real action on policies like affordable child care.
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We're so excited about Hidden Figures, the astonishing true story of how African American female mathematicians helped usher in some of NASA’s greatest achievements. The world needs to know about Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), the brilliant “female computer” who determined the launch and landing coordinates for John Glenn’s 1962 orbit around the earth. So let’s keep the momentum going: What about all the other impressive women who have busted up boys' clubs? To get you thinking, here are a few more heroic ladies who ought to be in pictures.
Madam C.J. Walker
May we suggest Sarah Breedlove, a.k.a. the legendary beauty innovator Madam C.J. Walker. This Louisiana-born daughter of former slaves worked hard all her life, including as a laundress. In 1906, she created a haircare line tailored to black women and, harnessing her mighty marketing skills, began peddling her goods door to door. At her death in 1919, Walker’s personal worth was about $700,000 (that would be $9.76 million today), making her the wealthiest black woman in America at the time. The happy ending: The impact of her beauty products is still turning heads today.
Ada Lovelace
May we suggest Ada Lovelace, the numbers-loving daughter of poet Lord Byron who’s now considered the world’s first programmer. She was translating an 1842 paper on mathematician Charles Babbage’s computer prototype when she realized that it could one day be programmed to perform problem-solving calculations. Victorian math minds pooh-poohed her, but without algorithms, you couldn’t play Candy Crush.
Margaret Bourke-White
May we suggest Margaret Bourke-White, a groundbreaking photojournalist who became the first female war correspondent, covering the air force in North Africa, the army in Italy, diplomats in the USSR, and migrant farmers in the Dust Bowl. Just picture Maggie the Indestructible doing, well, all the cool stuff she did in real life—risk her marriage to pursue her aperture ambitions! survive a torpedo attack! take a few snaps while perched atop one of the Chrysler Building’s glowering eagles!—in 3-D.
The Night Witches
May we suggest the Night Witches, the all-female Soviet WWII regiment that flew about 30,000 missions against the German military, dropping bombs from flimsy plywood-and-canvas crop dusters. Under the cover of darkness—and without parachutes, radios, or guns—they’d idle their engines near their target and glide in with a terrifying whoosh that made enemy soldiers think of broomsticks. By the time the credits roll, 30 Night Witches will have given their lives for their country, and 23—we’re picturing Slavic ringers Kirsten Dunst and Scarlett Johansson—will be named Heroes of the Soviet Union.
Pat Johnson
May we suggest LAPD officer Pat Johnson. In 1971, a 9-month-old girl was found abandoned in a Los Angeles hotel room. (She was discovered after guests told the manager she’d been crying for hours.) Policewoman Johnson (imagine a 1970s-ified Jennifer Lawrence) fed the baby milk, Jell-O, and cottage cheese and kept her swaddled in a desk drawer until the infant was taken to a foster home later that day. In the big-screen adaptation, Johnson abandons her desk duties to become a baby whisperer, visiting seedy and swanky hotels alike in search of neglected tots who depend on just her kind of savior.
Katherine Switzer
May we suggest Kathrine Switzer, the first female runner to officially enter the once all-male Boston Marathon. In 1967, after training with the Syracuse University men’s cross-country team and besting officials (she applied for a bib as K.V. Switzer), she was almost physically shoved off the course by blustering race codirector Jock Semple (we’re thinking Bryan Cranston), who’d be damned if he’d let a woman taint his testosterific event. Cut to Switzer’s proud finish—where (spoiler) her uterus doesn’t fall out.
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
