Women’s economic empowerment

Women continue to face substantial barriers to accessing and controlling economic resources and services.

This includes a lack of equal rights in the workplace, opportunities to work in a wide range of jobs or start businesses and the continuing failure to recognise, count and value women’s unpaid labour and its economic and social contribution.

Women as citizens, consumers or workers (paid and unpaid) are still largely invisible in dialogue and decision-making about trade and economic development. Both macro-and micro-economic policies continue to demonstrate an absence of gender analysis and a preference for the formal sector over the informal and non-monetised activities that sustain many communities. This risks de-valuing and undermining semi-subsistence and traditional economies and women’s unpaid care work and household and community labour. Lack of attention to the interactions between formal and informal economies limits the effectiveness of economic initiatives.

The disadvantages women experience in other areas also present significant impediments to economic empowerment:

• violence (including conflict, sexual violence, intimidation and human trafficking)
• inadequate access to education, training technology
• lack of ready access to clean water or sanitation
• limited health care and reproductive health services
• lack of access to financial services (both savings and credit)
• unsafe or insecure work conditions and lack of minimum wages
• cultural practices, traditions and conservative religious interpretations of women’s role and status
• lack of knowledge about rights and laws and lack of adequate representation in decision-making positions and governance structures.

IWDA’s economic empowerment work involves research, training, and advocacy partnerships that tackle these factors. We know that women’s economic empowerment at the
individual level will only be sustainable if accompanied by more equitable roles and relationships within families and communities, and policies, laws and systems that reflect and protect gender justice.

Our activities focus on building self-esteem, skills development, group solidarity, networking and awareness raising about civil and political rights. We support women’s entrepreneurship through training in production. We support partners’ savings groups and credit services for small businesses. Our research captures the gender dimensions and measurement of community-level economic activity and poverty. Through partnership exchange we provide a range of skills transfer including gender auditing and budgeting and associated gender training.

Projects

• Mobilising for empowerment and sustainability
• Taking Steps: empowering rural women to access sustainable livelihoods
• Women living in and growing in informal settlements
• Food security and income generation
• Supporting women and young people to build sustainable livelihoods in multi-ethnic communities

Past projects

• Economic, Social and Political Empowerment of Women Affected by the Tsunami
• Sustainability, Equity and Empowerment

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