increased access to paid work led to a long-term reduction in domestic violence. Lastly, Women's employment and access to financial resources increased their political participation. Data from Bangladesh indicates that longer membership in microfinance organizations have many positive effects including higher levels of political participation and improved access to government programs. Although the resources, technology and knowledge exist to decrease poverty through improving gender equality, the political will is often missing. If donor and developing countries focused on seven "priority areas", great progress could be made towards the MDG. These seven priority areas include: increasing girls' completion of secondary school, guaranteeing sexual and reproductive health rights, improving infrastructure to ease women's and girl's time burdens, guaranteeing women's property rights, reducing gender inequalities in employment, increasing seats held by women in government, and combating violence against women. It is thought by some women's rights' advocatess that the current MDGs targets do not place enough emphasis on tracking gender inequalities in poverty reduction and employment as there are only gender goals relating to health, education, and political representation. Feminist writers such as Naila Kabeer have argued that in order to encourage women's empowerment and progress towards the MDGs, increased emphasis should be placed on gender mainstreaming development policies and collecting data based on gender. Progress Progress towards reaching the goals has been uneven across countries. Brazil achieved many of the goals, while others, such as Benin, are not on track to realize any. The major successful countries include China (whose poverty population declined from 452 million to 278 million) and India. The World Bank estimated that MDG 1A (halving the proportion of people living on less than $1 a day) was achieved in 2008 mainly due to the results from these two countries and East Asia. In the early 1990s Nepal was one of the world's poorest countries and remains South Asia's poorest country. Doubling health spending and concentrating on its poorest areas halved maternal mortality between 1998 and 2006. Its Multidimensional Poverty Index has seen the largest decreases of any tracked country. Bangladesh has made some of the greatest improvements in infant and maternal mortality ever seen, despite modest income growth. Between 1990 and 2010 the population living on less than $1.25 a day in developing countries halved to 21%, or 1.2 billion people, achieving MDG1A before the target date, although the biggest decline was in China, which took no notice