In his address to the Rotary International Convention in June 2021, Shekhar Mehta urged Rotary members to put improving girls’ futures at the forefront of their work. “It is important that we empower girls,” said Mehta, who was shortly to take office as the 2021-22 Rotary president, “as we all find that more often than not, the girl is disadvantaged. We will serve all children, but our laser focus will be specially on the girl.”
Mehta made empowering girls one of his presidential initiatives, and his focus is particularly timely. Women continue to face economic hurdles, declining levels of political participation, and challenges in the workplace, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021. And the COVID-19 pandemic is among the factors that have extended the amount of time that experts estimate it will take to close the gender gap from an already daunting 99.5 years to 135.6 years.
