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Ivanka Trump pledges to bring ‘prosperity’ to women in the developing world - but her plans don’t add up

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AFP/ Twitter

In her latest bid to prove that she is hard at work empowering women, Ivanka Trump is launching a new programme to help 50m women in the developing world by 2025.

She announced the Woman’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative on Thursday, which promised to give $50m in USAID money to help 50m women.

But shortly after the announcement people pointed out one major flaw with the initiative – the money amounts to only one dollar per woman.

It’s fair to say that experts weren’t particularly impressed with Ivanka’s '1 woman, 1 dollar' approach to international development.

And soon other people on Twitter caught on to Ivanka’s flawed calculations.

Others pointed out Ivanka’s ‘hypocrisy’, given that her father has repeatedly tried to cut funding for foreign aid.

However, the White House told the Washington Post that the ‘$50m for 50m’ characterisation of the programme was not accurate.

After the initial publication of this article, White House Deputy Director of Communications Jessica Ditto responded in an email that the $50 million figure for 50 million people mischaracterized the initiative.

Ditto pointed toward a presidential memorandum signed Thursday that said that government agencies would be expected to 'prioritize and increase support for the Initiative within their budget proposals and within allocations of appropriated resources'.

The memorandum suggested that agencies would 'seek to collectively attribute no less than $300 million per fiscal year'. It did not offer specifics of where this money would come from.

Yet again, Ivanka’s not having the best time on social media.

HT Somecards

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