Taking Action to Ensure Women and Girls Have Every Opportunity, Stephenie Foster

Over the course of my career, I have been a diplomat, a lawyer, a business owner, an association executive, and an author. I have worked in the United States and across the globe to ensure gender equality and equal opportunity for women and girls. This journey has taken me to over 75 countries. It has led me to understand on a profound level that our world and its institutions are designed to mostly value and benefit men while excluding the voices of women.
As government and private sector leaders – still mostly men – struggle with fundamental issues including income inequality, food insecurity, climate change, the impact of pandemics, conflict prevention and resolution, and the rise of AI, they are often unaware of the disproportionate impact these issues have on women and girls.
The first piece of good news is that, despite these systemic challenges, the advocacy of courage of women and men globally had led to progress across multiple sectors and in most countries. The second piece of good news is that we can all continue to take concrete steps to advocate for more change, whether in our personal lives or in the policy arena.
I wrote my first book, Take Action: Fighting for Women & Girls, as a guidebook, an instruction manual, and a toolbox to fight for change. I fiercely believe that we can all do something (big or small, for only today or every day) to ensure that opportunities continue to expand for everyone. This book is a framework for advocacy. It outlines four key issues (access to education, economic opportunity and political participation, as well as the need to eradicate gender based violence) that lead to better outcomes. And it provides a list of actions you can take in your daily life, highlights salient and critical facts, spotlights role models, and provides topic-specific resource lists.
I co-authored my second book, Feminist Foreign Policy in Theory and Practice, to highlight the importance of gender equality to foreign policy. It outlines the countries that have such a policy as well as the research showing that this approach to foreign policy leads to more prosperity, safety, and security. It also furthers the conversation around how governments can develop and execute approaches to foreign policy that expand our view of security to address food security, health security, and personal security. The book stresses the need to apply a gendered analysis and perspective to all peace and security decision-making and the importance of involving women in all aspects of conflict prevention and resolution, peacebuilding, post-conflict reconstruction, and humanitarian relief.