>> hello and welcome to "global 3000," your weekly check on the global developments that affect us all. women are a force of change. but more than a century after the struggle for equal rights began, women in many countries still do not have their fair share of opportunities. the 8th of march is international women's day, and we look at what is changing and how much still needs to be done. here's what we have coming up. we meet the women of fiji who have taken over from their men as the main breadwinners how reproductive education is giving afghan women more control over their health.

and why making sanitary towels more affordable allows more young girls to go to school in africa. most women in afghanistan face oppression on a daily basis. human rights watch has warned that 2013 saw a setback on the modest progress made in women's rights in recent years. among other things, legislation to eliminate violence against women has been weakened, and the number of guaranteed parliamentary seats was reduced recently. the one million or so afghan women living in refugee camps may not have heard of any of this. but neither would they have felt the impact of recent improvements on paper. in kabul, we meet two international aid agencies who are trying to empower women within the narrow margins of their traditional role. >> jamani babrak -- the nightmare has a name. but the camp is just one of over

50 refugee settlements in kabul. four or maybe five thousand people live in jamani babrak alone. and every day the number rises. people from all over afghanistan are pouring into illegal settlements like this one. they come because they fear armed conflicts or because rural areas can no longer feed the growing population. people at rock bottom trust nobody. it took years before the aid organisations caritas and terre des hommes could convince people that sex education is a good thing. even in miserable circumstances there are hierarchies. first come the men and then, at the very bottom, the women. what are the stages of childbirth? this is education using the simplest of means. >> i had no idea how birth took

place. we just had children. and i didn't know how important hygiene was. we're poor, uninformed people. we hardly have enough money for food. how are we to pay for doctors and medicine? the aid workers take care of us. it's a blessing. >> only now that the mortality rate of mothers and babies has been reduced by half are the workers welcome everywhere -- even among the distrustful elders. the fact that they're allowed to talk about prenatal care and sex education in arch-conservative afghanistan is a sensation in itself. the fact that we're allowed to film them talking about contraception, birth control pills, and condoms, is almost inconceivable. filming doesn't seem to bother the women. most of them don't want to get pregnant every year anyway. the problem is with the afghan

men. >> the women are very interested in how to avoid unwanted pregnancies. they want to practise birth control -- most of them, at least. with the men it's different. they dream of large families, although they're poor and have no idea how they're going to support all their children. >> a house call in jamani babrak. married couples almost always disagree on whether the wife should be allowed to use birth control. and the arguments almost always end in the husbands getting violent. after 35 years of civil war in afghanistan and extreme poverty, the men have forgotten it's possible to have disagreements without resorting to blows. bismillah's family has ten children. the youngest is just a few months old. like nearly 40% of all afghan

children, the baby is undernourished and severely underweight. no one can say if it will live till its first birthday. the mother is ill, suffering from extreme anaemia and we're told she won't survive another pregnancy. bismillah claims his religion forbids contraception, so he rejects it. in addition, he says, it's god's will that people have lots of children. it will take staying power and a lot of persuasion to get him to accept contraception at all. >> he wants more children. i don't. first we discuss, then we argue. if i don't give in, he hits me. sometimes i just keep quiet when he starts in on the subject. if i'm lucky, he calms down and leaves me alone. >> aid organisations have spent hundreds of thousands of euros to improve living conditions in the refugee settlement. remarkably, caritas, a catholic charity, is promoting family planning here and distributing contraceptives free of charge.

>> caritas is here to help people, to keep them healthy - - and in the case of women who've had ten children, to make sure they don't have any more, because doing so puts their lives and health in great danger. >> the aid workers are in the camp almost daily, persuading and mediatíng. they estimate it will take another generation until men accept smaller families. most of the women have long been convinced it's the right way to go. >> most people would agree that education is the key to push for change. women scientists have been increasing, but getting into the top league of cutting edge research is still tougher for women than for men. we spoke to female scientists in the world's top economies and asked them why that's still the

case. >> if you want to advance in the academic world, it's publish or perish! a north american study has found that scientific journals contain twice as many articles by men as by women. >> who really gets a chance to publish at that kind of level? it's a fairly small and restricted environment of people, who are in our top research universities. how much extra money does it actually take to run a lab, to actually have the instrumentation, the equipment that you need in order to really produce the publications. this is the question of the matthew effect. to those who have, should be even given more in abundance. that is what is actually happening in the case of grant support. those who have, get more.

>> in germany 83% of endowed professorships are held by men - - even though more women study than men. >> how do you get a professorship? an appointments committee of future colleagues, co-workers and students is formed. they then choose their future colleague. and if the previous professor was excellent and well-liked, all of them will try to find someone as much like him as possible. that's going to be hard for a woman -- because she's not a man. >> so it's only partly the fault of the research institutes, as a test from the us shows. >> they had two cv's -- one had a male name and one had a female name. but they were otherwise identical. and it was for a lab-manager position. and so they ask people to rate the two cv's.

interestingly or maybe not so interestingly, they rated the one with the male name higher. they where willing to pay him more money and they saw his potential as being greater. >> must family and career be mutually exclusive? women in top positions often remain childless. but it doesn't have to be that way. >> at norwegian universities, it's a matter of course that people go home from work at four in the afternoon. people who want to work longer are asked, "why? don't you have children or a family? where's your work-life balance? they've managed to free many academic sectors from male connotations. >> that's the only way research can become a level playing field, harnessing women's potential instead of wasting it. >> so what do you think are the big factors that keep young girls out of school in developing countries? of course poverty and often

still the attitude that girls don't need an education. but it's sometimes also seemingly small issues that that kill dreams of a better life. >> when an engineer in uganda learned that some girls don't attend school several days a month because they cannot afford sanitary towels, he took this on as a personal challenge. and he developed the maka-pads - - a cheap alternative to imported hygiene products . sometimes change can be this simple -- and environmentally friendly as well. >> it's not yet easy to see what these sheets will become. they're a mixture of paper and the stems of papyrus reeds. they're spread out on large surfaces. these women are making them sanitary pads. the need for sanitary protection is huge, especially in schools, where hygienic conditions are bad. many girls can't afford imported sanitary pads.

moses musaazi, an engineering professor at makerere university in kampala, has developed a safe and cheap locally-made alternative -- makapads. >> they told me something i did not know -- that some girls who are too poor to afford sanitary pads missed going to school all the days they were menstruating. that means 3-5 days in a month they wouldn't go to school. progressively they would perform badly and then drop out of school before completing their education. >> moses musaazi and his colleagues experimented for three years to develop a model that worked. the material they use grows on the outskirts of kampala -- papyrus reeds. they're abundant and are easily processed. to make the makapads, workers cut the papyrus, peel off the green cover, and then take the

white stems to the factory. the work is done by people who live next to the fields. the makapads project is aimed at creating jobs for the needy -- unemployed women and refugees from the democratic republic of the congo and central africa are given preference. just under 200 people now work in the factory. production takes 40 steps, and almost everything is done by hand. >> the idea was to employ as many people as possible and using as little energy as possible. but therefore to use the sun or solar in the production and to employ many, many people out of it. >> they've been making the makapads in kampala for ten years. this is already the third production site. julie nakibuule has been there

since the beginning and is now general manager. >> it's really funny, that being a man he has invented a sanitary pad, which he obviously doesn't use for biological reasons. but he is a genius at innovations. >> moses musaazi derives inspiration from his immediate surroundings. >> on my side as a father, makapads has made a hugh impact. first of all my daughter and my wife use makapads, but most importantly they are very proud of me for having been able to innovate something out of what you'd call grass -- that is, papyrus -- into a product. >> they're so cheap that not only uganda's schools but also the unhcr refugee organization wants them. >> my future plans for the

makapads are twofold. first of all, i want to see makapads marketed outside the ugandan borders. i know i'm going to sierra leone, and a little bit beyond. i want to see makapads as a home product in africa. >> moses musaazi is expanding the business and he can hardly keep up with production. his simple idea has improved the lives of many women in africa. >> costa rica is one of the wealthiest and most stable countries in central america. its president and more than a third of its members of parliament are female. pretty progressive for the region's male-dominated societies. we caught up with one of the costa rica's most renowned artists. guadalupe urbina tells what she thinks about the globalisation taking place around her:

>> my name is guadalupe urbina. l'm 53 years old, almost 54. i live on the finca sonador in the community of the longo mai project in the south of costa rica. i've been doing it for many years. and i compose, because i studied music. but i also paint and i've written a few books. and i run workshops in several communities on management in the arts sector. i work with people.

fascinating. it brings many things closer to us that we'd never even dreamt of before. i could never have imagined being able to watch nomads walking through the desert on television. and i couldn't have imagined seeing the soy plantations in the amazon that are destroying the rain forest. haven't learned how not to worry. that's the biggest learning process i'm going through now: learning to live in the moment.

insects here, the cicadas. it's impressive, isn't it? turrialba cheese on a warm tortilla. but sometimes i lie down and read or watch a film. >> believe it or not, but in fiji the destructive forces of climate change have actually had a positive impact on the status of women.

sounds strange, but is true for the small communities of viti levu, fiji's main island. the villages there are battling with erosion and salination of their ground water. that's already ruined much of the area's precious farmland. in addition the nets of the fishermen remain increasingly empty. so what do families do when their men lose their main source of income? in fiji they've come up with alternatives that have propelled women into the very untraditional role of the main income earners. >> the day begins in daku with the arrival of the morning school boat. the children live on outlying islands in the rewa river delta. lessons will begin soon.

school. civics. >> don't wait for others to do something for you. think instead about how you can be useful to the community. otherwise you're as silly as breadfruit. >> community is important here in daku, a tiny village in the southeast of fiji's main island viti levu. the 400 some villagers have a common problem. it has become nearly impossible to grow anything here as a result of climate change. >> the river rises on a regular basis and floods half the village. that why our houses are on stilts. the brackish water rises from below.

we can't plant vegetables because everything dies right away. it's become more extreme over the past eight years. recently, a dam was built to protect the village. it was paid for with government and international aid. without it we might have been forced to relocate. we want to save the village for our children and grandchildren. >> but how can the village sustain itself? the women of daku have found an answer. and simultaneously sparked a revolution. for generations they've been weaving fans out of palm fronds. their technique is a well-kept secret. >> it's something sacred, a privilege that was granted to us

by vunivalu, fiji's first king. we weren't ever allowed to sell the fans. but now, with climate change and the economic problems, our men requested permission from the king. and for the past few years, we've been allowed to sell them . >> the fans are sold for about 3 euros each and now account for nearly 70% of daku's income. financially, the men of daku are now almost completely dependent on the women. it's a major change in their lives. until recently, women and younger villagers had little say. the fiji islands are still largely a male-dominated society. that's abundantly clear at the sevusevu ceremony. only men get to drink the coveted kava root grog. it's bitter, numbs the mouth and is considered a real delicacy. the drink is also said to be

healthy. the woven fan initiative hasn't led to greater social upheaval in the village thanks to a gender equality training program, financed with german funding. villagers attended workshops, where they learned that they could solve their economic problems better if the men and women worked together as equals. the women's representative tries to ensure that the lesson isn't forgotten. but not everyone in the village is happy when the bastions of male dominance are threatened. the school manager, a respected member of the community, airs his complaints. >> for me, gender has nothing to do with equality. the man should make decisions, not the woman. we know that from the bible. the woman should obey and serve him.

that's the natural, god-given order. and that shouldn't change. >> the men here have fished in the rewa river delta for generations. these mangrove swamps were once swarming with fish and shrimp. but in many areas, deforestation has led to river bank erosion. the water contains more sediment. the silt clogs the mangroves and destroys the fish breeding places. the fishermen see the effects every time they take their boats out. the catch in the fish traps is meager. so the men now regularly make trips to the fertile island of kalili to collect palm leaves for the fans. everything that grows here is considered common property.

>> i bring coconuts to eat back from the plantation and branches that are used to make the fans. that's become our most important source of income. >> it's a well-organized supply system that gives the men of daku the opportunity to contribute to the village's success. they also help to boil the fronds from the coconut palms. >> as husband of the women's representative, it's my job to support my wife. i see to the firewood and the water. and i'm very proud that she has this important position. >> i'm glad that you recognize my work. >> such examples of mutual respect are not to be taken for granted in fiji.

meanwhile, in daku, the villagers have gathered for a celebratation. the highlight is the meke dance. faces and bodies are blackened with charcoal. here at least, the young men of the village can carry on male traditions, just as the always have. >> that was global 3000 today, marking world women's day on the 8th of march. thanks for watching and don't forget to tune in again next week or check out our website for more on those and other stories. but for now, thanks for watching and bye bye! captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org--s4ç!gd

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