This month is the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day. To mark the occasion, The Foundation is shining a spotlight on inequities we are working hard to address in Indigenous Australia and around the world.

Gender equality is crucial to economic development and poverty reduction. See how The Foundation is helping to improve the lives of women through our Indigenous and International programs:

Empowering Indigenous women
In our own backyard, The Foundation is empowering Indigenous women through a variety of programs addressing health and wellbeing.
 
Restoring dignity through sight
The Fred Hollows Foundation has produced a short YouTube video which explains how dignity is being restored to women around the globe through sight-restoring work.

Gabi Hollows on Bio channel
We are also proud to announce that Gabi Hollows is featured  in a new television special, Australian Women: Shaping A Nation that will air on Foxtel’s Bio channel as part of International Women’s Day coverage.  

Some facts about gender and blindness:

• According to the World Health Organisation, women account for approximately two-thirds (64%) of the world’s blind population
• Women in developing countries are more likely than men to have cataract blindness and vision loss, accounting for between 53% and 72% of people living with cataracts
• Women in developing countries are much less likely to receive cataract surgery at the same rate as men
•  Recent research suggests that blindness from cataracts could be reduced by as much as 11% in developing countries if women were to receive cataract surgery at the same rate as men
• Trachoma is more common in women than in men, largely because women and girls are more likely to be infected while caring for young children. Surveys show that 75% of people with advanced trachoma are women
• The disproportionate prevalence of blindness for women is true across all preventable and treatable conditions that cause blindness. Only conditions such as age-related macular degeneration affect men and women at similar age-adjusted rates.