She has set up the Chioma Ajunwa Foundation to educate sports men and women in Nigeria on the dangers of using banned and illegal substances -- a struggle she had to overcome after her 1992 suspension.

CNN: Nigeria's Chioma Ajunwa's leap to glory after drug scandal

Until services began expanding in the past few years, women in southern Nigeria tended to pay for their contraception at small drug stores.

BBC: Team tackling contraception myths in northern Nigeria

In Ghana, Nigeria and Thailand the rate of nascent women is higher than men and in Brazil, Ecuador, Uganda and Switzerland the start-up rates by gender are equal.

FORBES: How Women Entrepreneurs are Transforming Economies and Communities

The deaths Saturday night of the doctors in Potiskum, a town in Yobe state long under attack by the sect known as Boko Haram, comes after gunmen killed at least nine women administering polio vaccines in Kano, the major city of Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north.

NPR: Attackers Kill 3 North Korean Doctors In Nigeria

Even better is the realization that women around the world have only just begun to show their strength: For the first time in 13 years, men have been outpaced by women in creating new businesses in nations like Thailand, Ghana and Nigeria.

FORBES: Why Women are defining Successful Entrepreneurship

And according to an article that ran earlier on Forbes.com, for the first time in 13 years, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) study of 59 economies shows that women are creating businesses at a greater rate than men in three economies, Ghana, Nigeria and Thailand, and are nearly equal in Brazil, Ecuador, Uganda and Switzerland.

FORBES: The Rarer Sex: The Self-Made Women Billionaires Of 2013