A woman's touch.

Many of us read or hear about those less fortunate than ourselves and wish there was something we could do to help. Usually, we simply move on. But not today.

At present, there’s a list of women who have strengths that amazes men, who have bear hardships all these years, who have carried burdens all this while and have initiated happiness, joy and love into this world of ours. Women can make a difference and they have.

They are the ones who teaches us compassion and concern, who have shadowed a child’s move since birth and I believe they will never take “no” for an answer when they know there’s a better solution.The world have change, for better and for the worse, stories from the past has amended with time and now, women has come to an age where nothing’s impossible and the has become a canvas for them to paint.

To paint ideas, issues and thoughts.

Throughout history, women have always aimed for a recognized place in society. Guided by their own field of knowledge and expertise, women like Marie Curie in science, Mary Wollstonecraft in literary writing, Simone de Beauvois in philosophical existentialist debate, and Marie Stopes, in medicine, to name a few, have brought about an awareness of the role of women in any walks of life.

To understand that role of a woman, inspiring instances have occurred to acknowledge all of us that woman can lead a double life and be successful.

Queen Rania of Jordan has always believed in her mind that poverty is a she. Evidently with the years then, misogynists have considered negativities with womanhood and thereafter considered them amongst the lower species. Thus, she has become prominent around the world for her efforts to improve educational opportunities for girls and the rights of women. Helping others is something that she felt obligated to do because when you feel that another is no different from whom you are, you begin to want the same for them just as you want for yourself and then you start to rally round.

Concurring with Rania, I deem there is a direct relationship between increasing education and eradicating poverty. You can change the course of a nation through edification and one of the most important things you can do for a girl is empower her with education. Palpably upon education, can then she have control over her income, amend her life and have eventual choices.

Rania says that when people focus on differences between cultures chiefly stereotypes and even clothes like veil which regrettably many view it as a sign of coercion and weakness, they fail to realize just how akin all people are.

“When you go beyond the mannerisms, the language, the cultural idiosyncrasies, you realize that you're how similar women can be. We should judge a woman according to what's going on in their heads rather than what's going on top of their heads." – Queen Rania of Jordan

And that’s just a glimpse of reflection.

Liberia, a small country on the northwest coast of Africa and home to 3 million people, has been a struggle for the past two decades. In the early 1980s, a bloody civil war broke out when civilians dismayed against their despotic dictator, Samuel Doe. In due course, he was overthrown from power and expatriate Charles Taylor was elected president. But the violence and disarray continued. Women were gang raped, their husbands were executed and thousands of children were given weapons and taught to kill. More than 25 000 people were murdered.

Today, the scars of war are still obvious. Though the wounds have faded, the pain finds it hard to be oblivious. The country lacks running water and electricity, and schools and hospitals have been destroyed. More than 80 percent of the people are unemployed and most subsist on less than one dollar a day.

For the first time in more than 20 years, the people of Liberia got to freely vote for a new leader In November 2005. Their preference made history when a 67-year-old grandmother of nine became Africa's initial elected female president. President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf made a difficult decision to leave her children behind to come to the United States for education. She waited tables to pay for three college degrees, including her Master's.

After graduation, she returned to her family in Liberia determined to help her unhinged homeland and worked for the Ministry of Finance. After speaking out adjacent to the ruling military regime, she was thrown in jail twice. When Johnson-Sirleaf was released, she was exiled to Kenya and worked as an economist for the United Nations, thereafter.

She returned to Liberia and made her first run for President against corrupt leader Charles Taylor and lost in 1997. Johnson-Sirleaf ran for the presidency again and, she was sworn in and became Africa's first elected female leader on January 16, 2006. Her historic inauguration was merriment for women around the world.

" I'm trying to change attitudes, habits in discipline, lawlessness that have characterized the country for so many years and trying to get people to appreciate an education." - Johnson-Sirleaf

Women who are victims of rape have little or no security, indubitably across the globe. To address this dreadful reality, one of the first things President Johnson-Sirleaf did for the Liberian women was to pass a law that makes rape illegal. Under a watch, there shan’t be a crime go with impunity, let alone rape.

Education is foremost on her agenda, particularly for girls. In this country, much of Africa, the girls get left behind and the boys are seen as the ones that will be the power brokers, the ones that will be the professionals. Girls get married at a vulnerable age and responsibilities thus escalate for the young ones. While belligerence and rioting took away the shelter, many children found extreme difficulties to attend school and that resulted in eventual dropouts. So what she did was to try to respond to that and make sure there would be programs that will sustain girls' education.

Sirleaf's biography is a breathtaking saga of wars, threats, political imprisonment and exile when she was not breaking glass ceilings in international banking and development. She displayed not a particle of self-pity about any barriers that sexism may have thrown in her path.

She is now one of the most powerful women in the globe.

Gone are the days when women had to whisper and breathe in scrutiny, let alone die because of her. In the likes of people like her, new days have arrive for a woman to voice and help each other from household chores to business to politics to being a mother. With either assurance or resistance can a woman prevail and sure can she be the one standing strong.

To quote Margaret Sanger, “Woman must not accept; she must challenge. She must not be awed by that which has been built up around her; she must reverence that woman in her which struggles for expression.

You think you know but you have no idea.