1000 Girls | World Vision

I found this on a YT ad.

Within the realm of philanthropy, feminism is considered important because, supposedly, most of the root causes of poverty relate to issues that are specific to women's livelihoods.

Ever since DOGE got rid of USAID, Marxists, Greens, conservatives, and libertarians alike (just not mainstream Democrats) have been openly agreeing that USAID was an arm of US imperialism, which in reality was destabilizing Global South nations in favor of US interests---all at the expense of US taxpayers. Most voices from the Global South have been condemning it for years. For another example, the World Jewish Fund was a charity that was being used to plant nonnative trees in Palestine to conceal the ruins of the dispossessed Palestinian dwellings.

From here, we must question how many charities with similar stated goals to USAID are responsible for similar impacts. So, I'm gonna list out all of the purported reasons for focusing on girls and try to analyze their validity.

Helping end child marriage

Child marriage is a problem in these countries, because the bride may not yet understand that it might benefit her to first pursue other avenues in life. Even worse is when the groom is significantly older, because the power dynamic can lead to coercion.

I think the logic is that if boys and girls can both make money, girls (especially orphans) will be less desperate to marry for survival.

When girls get opportunities, everyone wins

When women and girls gain equal access and opportunity, children are better cared for, families are stronger, and communities are more prosperous.

This platitude sounds awfully familiar. "Feminism is for everyone", as well-intentioned Bell Hooks titled her book.

The only part of this with which I confidently agree is that Global South inhabitants need to be educated about contraception and fertility in order to prevent scarcity while maximizing sexual freedom. But such education can go to both sexes.

While I also agree that gender equality generally makes communities more prosperous, the problem sometimes with income equality is that it causes the women to compete with the men in the job market. This can be offset, but only if men be given supplementary education to learn the female gender roles; that way, any household can have a provider wife and a stay-at-home husband, or vice versa, or even a mixture, depending on individual lifestyle preferences (that end would be ideal as an improvement over the Global South's general status quo of traditional gender roles).

Many of these Global South cultures may not be ready for such social change, and to try "educating" them (as if they are too backwards to figure out why gender equality is necessary) is demeaning to them. Outside intervention as a mean to this end seems like an unstable (and likely destabilizing) solution. As Che Guevara wrote, "there are no liberators; the people must liberate themselves".

A big problem that comes with many charities is that they try to provide education to people who, for cultural reasons, would have no use for that education because many of them have difficulty in adjusting to the drastic changes in technology. Inspiring the people of those countries to free themselves from oppressive governments (which are usually backed by the West), and then letting them organically develop a prosperous economy, is a much better solution; Vladamir Lenin (and by extension especially Che Guevara) always knew this, hence why Marxist nations tend to have many strong alliances with Global South nations, working at the forefront to decolonize them.

Another thing I must question is, if these communities are suddenly becoming so prosperous after benefitting from charity, don't you think they should be blogging on the internet collectively about how lucky they were, talking more about Global South problems and their solutions? I would have to expect some international activism from such a moving experience, inasmuch that the towns should gain notoriety from their success at being aided.

So, what do you guys think? Are these types of charities really being used as fronts for sexist colonialism, or does feminism actually promote a good cause in the Global South?