Girls Get Guts from Globalization I

Ran across three items with similar themes: women being freed by contact with the bigger world. The first is in a Wash Post article--Facing Servitude, Ethiopian Girls Run for a Better Life:

"Professional running in Ethiopia was long dominated by men, and the country has produced some of the world's best male distance runners. The legendary Haile Gebrselassie, 33, has broken 17 world records and won two Olympic gold medals. But in the last decade, determined female runners like Meseret Defar, 22, have also begun winning Olympic medals, world championship races and marathons. Today, according to an Ethiopian sports magazine, seven of the 10 top-earning athletes in Ethiopia are women.

Inspired by these new national heroines, Tesdale and thousands of other girls have left their villages and come to the capital, living with relatives in hardscrabble neighborhoods, training on their own and dreaming of being able to compete."

Ethiopia is a male chauvinist society, with the women doing the heavy lifting of water and wood. Even the women who don't find money from running get a measure of hope.