“The past four years have brought some exciting changes in the U.S. government when it comes to progress in gender equality,” Maryce Ramsey, senior gender equality adviser for IntraHealth International, writes in the organization’s “Global Health Blog.” She highlights a memorandum issued by President Obama in January stating “that ‘promoting gender equality and advancing the status of women and girls around the world remains one of the greatest unmet challenges of our time,'” as well as a USAID meeting on gender that took place in January. “There is a longstanding symbiotic relationship between gender advocates and implementers in non-profits and [non-governmental organizations (NGOs)] and those within government,” she states, adding, “Now that it seems that the U.S. government is doing its part to address gender equality, they’re looking to us — the non-profits, the NGOs, the partners who carry out USAID’s work and rely on federal dollars — to make sure we’re addressing it, too” (3/7).