You're wrong, GG, and you are jumping to conclusions: of course it matters. But you're not going to charge in and change three thousand years of cultural prejudice, and any attempt at intervention will probably only lead to conflict in which loss of life by selective birth control is replaced by loss of life by bullets and bombs.

Whereas AIDS is a medical AND cultural problem, and famine and Haiti are economic ones.

Yes, taking action to empower women is very important, but so is recognising that dysfunctional societies eventually lead to their own downfall (or adaptation); witness the Mongol hordes, and our own likely demise by surfeit.