We need to start focusing on investing in the education of the next generation of women. Times change and so do behaviours. People from our generation feel as though they have the responsibility to change how opportunities are presented and make sure that fairness is given to all that follow.

I believe that women entrepreneurship will not only give a boost to the economy by increasing the number of employed people and leading towards a more gender-equal growth. Not being financially independent is one of the main factors that prove as a hindrance in self-empowerment of women, especially in patriarchal societies like India.

Imagine the G20 Leaders (Zuma, Obama, Harper, Pena Nieto, Rousseff, Fernandez de Kirchner, Jinping, Keqiang, Yudhoyono, Abe, Geun-hye, Singh, Putin, Erdogan, Merkel, Hollande, Cameron, Letta, Abdullah and Gillard). Open your eyes. Now imagine 20 girls. What you see are the G(irls)20 Summit delegates.

The international community struggles with the challenge of serving the world's poor in an urban environment. In this struggle, Plan turned its attention to one of the most vulnerable groups in poor urban centres -- young girls.

In Canada, most teenage girls are busy going to school, making friends, dreaming of the future. In the world's poorest countries, one in every nine girls is married by the age of 15. A new World Vision report explores the devastation this can cause in a young girl's life.

Modern women's history, as a separate branch of history, developed at the same time as the second wave of the women's movement, starting in the 1960s. But one stage of a woman's life is still vastly under-researched, and that stage is the earlier years of girlhood. It's interesting then to see that girls are fast becoming a focus of interest for some charities.

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) is an important factor to our society. Girls' accomplishments in STEM are created by the quality of female leaders around them. Once young girls see themselves as successful as the leaders before them they will believe in the potential for academic growth therefore a positive outcome will result out of it.