Investing in the Global Power of Women

Through our business and in partnership with others, Abbott is working every day to empower women to build better lives and stronger communities in countries around the world.

One example of this work is a partnership to support the pioneering efforts of Nobel Prize nominee Sakena Yacoobi to improve health and provide livelihoods for women in Afghanistan.  For nearly a decade, Abbott and the Abbott Fund have worked with Yacoobi’s Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL) and Direct Relief to empower women as healthcare providers. The partnership has trained more than 75 midwives and supported women-staffed clinics, providing critical care and health education for more than 1.5 million women and children, and much-needed economic opportunity for women.

This important work was highlighted in a recent cover story in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, “Empowering Women at the Grassroots,” including a comment from Abbott's Katherine Pickus on the impact of the partnership: “What we found within a year of their completion of training is that each and every midwife had a job and was making money for her family, investing that money in their girls’ education, and really developing a cycle of empowerment.”

For more information on Abbott's action to empower women in our workplace, across our business and in communities around the world, click here.