Arjan - thanks for sharing that. Is there a link where people can find out more?
Hello All and great to see friends here. I understand the desire to create enabling business environments, especially for women. My one suggestion is that we also need examples of women led solutions that are scaling already and whose success will attract other women and strategic partners. This is especially true for women led social enterprises. There are great examples that should be the foundation of enabling environment investments so that you get scale and environments with the same investments.
It is difficult to separate economic empowerment from the challenges adolescent girls face early on - addressing gender based violence, accessing sexual health and reproductive rights and opportunities to practice leadership... we need to start earlier and in a more cohesive way to ensure girls are able to reach maturity with opportunities open (prevent early and forced marriage, pregnancy, etc.) We need programs that are holistc and early on...
you touch an important issue: real empowerment is when businesses open up to adress work-life balance. is there scope for introducing organised chid care? and how to engage men? otherwise women wil always face their doube/ triple burden.
If I had to pick just one of the greatest opportunities to engage business in support of girl and women empowerment it would be leveraging company purchasing power. Inclusive sourcing is one of the most sustainable ways for corporations to build the capacity and wealth of women who want to compete for business. Not all women business owners want to get into large global value chains, but for those who do, it is important that they have equal access to market opportunities along the entire global value chain, including local business opportunities. Ensuring equal access is not easy and it will take a village which is why these discussions on how to do it are so important!
I understand the 5by20 programme is designed to empower women entrepreneurs across your value chain from raw material producers to all the way to artisans who create items from Coca-cola cans and per bottles. This is a great approach.
Kate - I agree with you as well.
Segmentation is a key factor here. Recognize that women and girls are very different population segments and businesses should avoid automatically lumping them as one when designing interventions. Recognize their needs are very different and partnerships need to recognize and understand that within ‘girls’ there are many segments – the same with women. Different approaches and tactics are required for women in different geographies, economic level, literacy level, stage in life cycle, access to infrastructure - even in the same country. Which specific segments of girls and which women are you/we trying to reach?
I have a great resource that focusses on development of interactive education programs both here in the US and overseas. STEM, K-12, environmental and specialist issues such as self esteem, health and wellness. The company creates tools, messaging and compelling campaigns, as well as reach/network into teachers, schools and communities.
For more info, please drop me an email and will send further information. sam@reputation-dynamics.com
One great and free resource comes from our partnership with Standard Chartered Bank - Goal is an award-winning development programme which uses sport and life skills education to transform the lives of adolescent girls. Created by Standard Chartered, it is primarily designed for girls ages 12-18 who are living in underserved communities. It is free http://goalprogramme.org/
Attended a great conference last week called Trust Women, supported by the Thompson Reuters Foundation - placed a big spotlight on women & finance, women & land rights http://www.trust.org/spotlight/trust-women-conference-2014/?source=search
Absolutely David. Interestingly, it's also about redefining the type of jobs that are open to women. In South Sudan a Plan project to empower girls who haven't been able to complete secondary education is having great success by training girls to become car mechanics. The first few female apprentices have shown that girls can succeed in this typically male workplace, and are paving the way for this kind of employment for others. There's a lovely quote in our latest Because I am a Girl report:
“In the future, I want to be a very successful auto mechanic. I think I am a good role model. Sometimes
people in high positions encourage and advise me and tell me I’m a good example. I make them happy
as they just cannot believe that a lady can do such things!”
Quite a few examples have already been shared, but let's move on to question 2:
Q2: Where are the innovations happening to empower women and girls, and what are we learning about what works?
Excellent point.
I agree that inclusive sourcing and inclusive distribution are part of the solution. However, access to finance for women is an issue that needs to be tackled. Women entrepreneurs need financing to upgrade their production or buy inventory to be part of large multinational supply or distribution chain. I think linking into micro finance industry could be part of the solution.
Maria - that's great - thanks for sharing that.
Yes there are a lot of great summits, conferences, and discussions happening almost daily on women/girls empowerment, but I think the challenge is often it's the converted talking to the converted. And it's virtually all women. I think the movement needs to aim to be more inclusive. We all know it's not a woman thing, it's a human thing, but how do we actually get people to HEAR that message.
Relative to girls, there aren't enough initiatives that are connecting the biz models with girls themselves. Business and their products are usually developed by people who have never experienced what a girl in poverty has. So that's one huge difference of the SPRING accelerator: involving girls in the actual product design. Who else has examples of projects where there is a human centered/girl centered design approach on the products, the marketing, the business design where they are involving girls and women from the very start ? We're so excited to be working on that aspect of our project with a team from fuseproject ... and looking for others with similar approaches on women/girls work...
Absolutely. I'm concerned that we tend to give one definition to what economic empowerment means to women and girls, according to the society or/and the level of poverty you are in. We work in extremely poor countries, at the bottom of the pyramid, where time poverty for women and girls is interconnected with "money poverty" due to the gender gap and house burden on women like fetching wood an water. On average a woman in Zambia spends 800 hours a year just fetching water...vs 50 hours for a man. What does it tell you?
Step 1- Unlock time to provide quicker access to basic needs like water, wood, fuel efficient technologies
Step 2- Allow Household savings (women are usually in charge of household purchasing and spending)
Step 3- once they have time and saved money, they can think about generating money and entrepreneurship
This is indeed a welcome development. Am so very glad to be part of this discussion. This is Hannah Agunkejoye from Nigeria. As the executive Director of LADIES HELPLINE INITIATIVE, this topic of discussion forms part of our objective and goal. We seek for opportunities and collaborations as grass root NGO to improve the lives of young females in my community as well as globally.
I am glad to be part of this discussion.
Thank you.
And let's not pretend that we have all the answers already! We have ideas about what works, we're busy collecting evidence, but we need to be taking a long-term view of interventions, and projects need open-minded, progressive funders who are willing to enable monitoring over a 5 - 10 - 20 year period, and not expect results in 2 - 3 years. To Maria's point, the new Plan, Aflatoun and Credit Suisse programme is innovating in precisely the way it's integrating financial education within an existing set of education interventions - we think that economic empowerment via financial literacy is key component of giving girls 'the keys to power', but you won't have an impact if you do that in isolation