Democracy starts with women

■"With Loans Poor South Asia Women Turn Entrepreneurial," by Cris Prystay, Wall Street Journal, 25 May 2005, p. B1.

■"Asia's Democratic Values: The U.S. has played a critical role in transforming the region," op-ed by Francis Fukuyama, Wall Street Journal, 25 May 2005, p. A12.

Another great article highlighting the utility of microfinance in empowering women in traditional societies. Notice how you never read stories about microloans empowering men in the Gap, just women?

Here we're into the territory of Prahalad's "power at the bottom of the pyramid": if you want to reach new markets in the world, they're more often than not going to be rural and impoverished, so you better reach the women the same way Singer and Sears and JC Penney figured out how to do in the U.S. decades ago.

Empowering women drives democracy because empowering women is how you set in motion broadband economic development. There was no "Asian miracle" that did not involve women entering the labor force, pure and simple. We set that example, and we can trigger that development, but only if we keep women at the forefront of our development aid.