Women around the world confront unimaginable obstacles. The following facts highlight some of the most devastating problems that occur every minute of every day.

In South Africa, about 50,000 rapes are reported every year, but it is estimated that only one of every 20 is reported. The actual figure could be as high as one million.

Of the 3-4 percent of rapes that are reported in South Africa, only around 15 percent lead to a conviction.

Using these stats, one can expect almost 1,300 women a day to be victimized by rape in South Africa, a situation that has prompted one government official to call it the rape capital of the world.

Adding to the problem is the fact that South Africa has a very narrow definition of rape, which doesn’t include oral rape or rape with objects.

In China, unwanted children put up for adoption are three times more likely to be girls.

In China in the late 1980’s, women who already had one son were twice as likely to seek an abortion for a subsequent pregnancy as women who had only daughters.

For sons, expenditure on medical care in the first two critical years of life is more than two times higher than for daughters.

A focus group for school-aged girls in Ibadan, Nigeria, reported that the girls mentioned pills, condoms, bitter lemon and lime or Pepsi-cola and lime introduced vaginally as effective contraceptive methods.

Every minute, 40 women experience an unsafe abortion. That amounts to 20 million per year.

Adolescent women under age 20 account for up to 60 percent of abortion-related complications in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The World Health Organization attributes the loss of 200,000 lives annually to illegal abortion.

While girls and boys are likely to have similar enrollment rates in primary school, by age 16, fewer girls then boys are in school in nearly every country in sub- Saharan Africa, Asia and the Near East.

In Mali, 84 percent of girls have never attended school. Of those who attend, 60 percent drop out in the primary grades.

Of the nearly one billion illiterate adults, two-thirds are women living in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.

Most of women’s time is spent in the non-wage economy, creating a misperception that women’s work has no economic value. In parts of East Africa, women work up to 16 hours a day in the home, and grow 60 to 80 percent of the family’s food.

In Java, girls spend 33 to 85 percent more hours per day working at home and in the market as boys the same age.

Statistics from: Advocates for Youth "Gender Bias: Perpsectives from the Developing World" and Ipas.org