Browse by Theme: Women's Economic Empowerment

CARE was delighted to host yesterday’s event to a full house of business leaders, global experts, and civil society actors to talk about how the private sector can empower women in the economy, including by implementing the UN High Level Panel (HLP) on Women’s Economic Empowerment’s new recommendations.

Across the world, women make a significant contribution to agricultural supply chains, in spite of complex hurdles that limit their inclusion and their leadership. The UN High Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment (HLP) identified seven key drivers for women’s economic empowerment (WEE), and the HLP called on governments, private sector companies and civil society organisations to step up their work on WEE by increasing investment, finding new types of partnerships and expanding their actions to more of the ‘drivers’.

The private sector is an essential partner in the women’s economic empowerment movement. Corporations large and small employ a significant proportion of the labour force worldwide, and their value chains touch all economies and nearly every person on Earth. They have enormous power to bring about transformative change through inclusive hiring and promotion policies, market expansion, workforce development, and procurement spending.

What does women’s economic empowerment mean to you?

To me, women’s economic empowerment is a fresh and insightful new approach to uplifting the status of women in all walks of life.

The Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) has recently published a report on DFID’s approach to supporting inclusive growth in Africa – A learning review. Given the major increase in DFID’s economic development budget over the last few years (to £1.8 billion in 2015-16 – more than doubling the amount spent in 2012-13) and the publication at the start of this year of DFID’s new Economic Development Strategy, ICAI’s review of the evidence being used to structure DFID’s spend and programming is timely. It aims to answer a question of great interest to CARE: how DFID manages the dilemma between focusing on transformational growth and ensuring that the poor are able to benefit from it.

There is currently a great opportunity for everyone who is interested in women’s economic empowerment to push forward a key initiative to tackle the gender-based violence which plays a key role in the workplace in continuing oppressive working conditions, in diminishing women’s voices, and in breaching women’s rights. Achieving an ILO Convention on ending violence and harassment in the workplace will support the empowerment of millions of women.

Organisations thrive when management and employees have open communications and are able to discuss issues and develop solutions together. Investing in workers can lead to an increase in their productivity, reliability and quality of work. Most importantly, workers who have an effective voice within the workplace and around the issues affecting the wider community, can better protect their rights and achieve their potential. That’s why we’ve just launched a new partnership with Twinings to improve the lives and livelihoods of tea workers and so increase the sustainability of the tea value chain.