According to a 2016/2017 study by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Mexico is one of the five countries in the world where the number of women starting their own businesses is equal to or greater than men. This is fantastic news because if men and women participate equally in the economy, Mexico’s GDP could increase by 43 percent or $810 billion. From 2000 to 2010 alone, women’s participation in the workforce decreased extreme poverty by 30 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean. With that increase in female entrepreneurship in Mexico, women are able to become more independent, but many women still face powerful barriers in starting their own business.
Many women, especially in subsistence settings, lack access to training, financing and markets, and face physical, sexual and economic violence. The average female-headed household earns $507 a month in urban areas and $273 a month in rural areas while male-led households earn $780 a month in urban areas and $351 a month in rural areas. The burden of domestic tasks also falls mostly on women. A 2009 survey found that men spend an average of 53 hours a week on economic activities and 12 hours on domestic tasks while women spend an average of 40 to 45 hours a week earning money and 20 hours maintaining the family and household.
The Marketplace Literacy Project
Elena Olascoaga, a gender and development consultant and former project manager for the Marketplace Literacy Project in Mexico, is very familiar with the challenge successful female entrepreneurship in Mexico faces. Olascoaga describes the Marketplace Literacy Project as an initiative to help people in subsistence settings become entrepreneurs by acknowledging the skills they already have in the marketplace and giving them the tools to build on and market pre-existing skills.
According to Olascoaga, the founder of this methodology and workshop program, Professor Madhu Viswanathan, tried to bring this program to Mexico for a long time before finding a U.S. State Department grant intended for breaking cycles of violence against women due to economic dependency. He initially designed the program to be gender-neutral so Olascoaga came in because her background in gender consultancy allowed her to effectively factor the unique challenges female entrepreneurship in Mexico faces to the workshops. She added a new program to the methodology that she called autonomy literacy, because, although the program teaches participants to create their own income, it is often difficult for people in abusive situations to start a business, even if they have the know-how.
The Need for Female Entrepreneurship in Mexico
While Mexico has made great strides to improve gender equality, there is often still a cultural emphasis for women to become mothers and housewives, to a point where Olascoaga describes economic dependence as romanticized. Many consider women lucky if they do not have to work because their husband provides food and shelter. However, this kind of love can be a trap. If the husband is the only provider, then the wife is not building her own savings or gaining experience in the workforce. “If something goes wrong in the relationship, then they have nowhere else to go,” she said.
In an interview by Forbes Magazine, hotel owner Gina Lozada said that “…Most parents don’t educate their girls to succeed in business. On the contrary, it is normal that women are raised to believe that their goal should be to marry and take care of the family.” Often, because female entrepreneurship in Mexico does not receive emphasis, women feel that they do not have many options and lack the confidence to start their own company.
Olascoaga observes that, because women in subsistence settings feel that they cannot strike out of their own, they often stay with their abuser. “A common phrase is no se hacer nada which is I don’t know how to do anything,” she says. Autonomy training, when combined with marketplace literacy training, teaches women that they do know how to do something. For example, they might be good cooks or skilled embroiderers. The methodology of the Marketplace Literacy Project is to build on preexisting knowledge and teach women to recognize their skills and to think strategically about their resources.
Autonomy Literacy
“We want women to be aware that they can create their income,” said Olascoaga. In the workshops, the Marketplace Literacy Project works with women in two age groups, women older than 18 and girls 14 to 18 years old. In her experience, almost all the women older than 18 had been in violent relationships where they stayed with their aggressors because they did not have economic independence. Some among the younger group were already mothers and in violent relationships where they had the potential to work and build skills, but their partners would not let them.
As the younger group went through the program, though, many of them began to realize that their mothers, aunts and other relatives were living in similar situations. One struggle that she noted when working with women is that they will not recognize that they are living in an abusive situation, especially to a group of strangers, so they instead speak in hypotheticals. The participants may know someone in this situation, and if they did, they would express how they could help.
The Marketplace Literacy Project, though, has helped give more than 4,500 women tools for economic independence since its start in 2016. Olascoaga said that those who participate have two major takeaways. The first is that autonomy becomes a very important concept and the second is that they do not need money to start a business. Olascoaga was happy to report that women will often come up to her and say that, after the workshop, they started businesses by selling cookies or embroidering. “It might seem small to us,” Olascoaga said, “but for them, it’s a really big deal.”
With female entrepreneurship in Mexico on the rise, more and more women are not only finding empowerment in their lives but changing the world around them by challenging a culture that often devalues their work.
– Katharine Hanifen
Photo: Flickr
How Tala is Changing the World One Loan at a Time
The Financially Anonymous
Only 30 percent of the world’s adult population has a financial identity. The other 70 percent lack a credit history or any way of applying for loans. This severely limits opportunities to financially advance because loans are often necessary for larger investments, like starting a business, purchasing farm equipment or investing in better irrigation systems.
Credit and loans are only accessible with some type of paper trail or financial history if customers are borrowing from traditional banking institutions. It would be too risky to lend money to anyone lacking credit and financial history. Siroya, Tala’s founder and CEO, realized “that there are billions of people around the world who are not ever seen and don’t even have an identity. That felt really wrong.”
How Tala Works
Tala is a smartphone application available to anyone with an Android phone. With permission from the user, the application uses data collected from smartphones to create a digital credit history that determines if the customer is eligible for a loan. It serves the same purpose as traditional credit history to create a unique financial profile for each user. It is currently serving customers in Kenya, Tanzania, the Philippines, Mexico and India with Kenya accounting for the majority of users.
Using nontraditional data, Tala analyzes each of its three billion users using 10,000 unique data points to determine a user’s risk profile and whether they would be a credible borrower. Data points come from information gathered from texts, calls, sales transactions, application usages and personal identifiers that help to create a unique profile for each user. About 85 percent of Tala users receive a loan within 10 minutes of this vetting process. The average Tala loan is $50. Users typically invest these loans in equipment or business licenses, which are important opportunities that are not available to those who cannot access credit.
Tala expects customers to repay the loan within 30 days, which 90 percent of customers do on time. Tala is a loaning service that deals in microloans, ranging from $10 to $500. Since the company’s inception in Santa Monica in 2014, it has granted a total of six million loans worth $300 million and amassed a customer base of 1.3 million. Investors like Revolution Growth, IVP, Data Collective, Lowercase Capital, Ribbit Capital and Female Founders Fund with around 215 employees around the world fund Tala.
How Microloans Change Lives
Tala is a microfinancing company, using small loans to make big changes. Siroya herself has seen how these small funds make disproportionate improvements in people’s lives. Jennifer in Nairobi, a 65-year old food-service entrepreneur, needed credit to invest in a food stall and start her business. However, she had no credit history and banks refused to invest in her business aspirations. Her son heard of Tala and introduced her to the smartphone app. After answering eight to 10 questions, Tala approved her for a loan.
Over the last two years, Jennifer has taken out 30 loans and subsequently opened three food stalls. Additionally, she now has a formal credit history and can borrow money from formal bank institutions. In fact, Jennifer has used this opportunity to take out a small business loan from a bank and begin opening her own restaurant.
There are more people like Jennifer who lack opportunity but with help from Tala, they are beginning to see changes. By developing a real relationship with their customers, Tala is changing the world by updating the face of microfinancing and the very notion of credit history. Now it is possible to identify those who banking institutions ignored and give them a fair chance at empowering themselves.
– Julian Mok
Photo: Pixabay
Africa’s Bright Future: 5 Facts About Prosper Africa
The Next Big Market
Africa is quickly urbanizing and consuming new products. The Brookings Institution found that urbanization accounted for 80 percent of African growth. African consumers and businesses spent $4 trillion in 2015 amid this explosion, a number expected to rise to $6.66 trillion by 2030.
Local businesses have become very profitable. There are 400 African firms that make at least $1 billion yearly. Successful companies secure themselves from the continent’s instability using a variety of methods. Dangote Industries, for example, forms relationships with host governments and creates its own electricity to run its facilities.
Supporting African Business
Despite these victories, Africa’s business environment still suffers from shortcomings in infrastructure and employment. Firms are difficult to run when 600 million people throughout the continent lack electricity. Youth unemployment compounds this issue. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s Finance Minister, worries that African youth will turn to violent extremism if economic opportunities do not appear.
Prosper Africa will not only seek to remedy the abovementioned ailments but also compete with China’s trade dominance in the region. According to Business Insider, China’s Belt and Road initiative is already in full force. This initiative seeks to strengthen ties with Africa through trade and business development. President Xi Jinping announced in 2018 that $60 billion would go toward Africa’s development. Among the new projects funded by China are a $31.6 million East African trade headquarters and a $500 million cement factory in Zambia.
5 Facts About Prosper Africa
These five facts about Prosper Africa show that the U.S. is taking a new approach to fighting poverty in Africa. Direct foreign investment will pave the way for prosperity going forward, and aid will have a training focus. Prosper Africa has potential not only to compete with China’s investments but also to generate healthier environments across the continent.
– Sean Galli
Photo: Pixabay
Rescued Child Soldiers Find Peace Through Art
At the age of seven, Judith became an accomplice to a murder. The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) raided her village and forced Judith to participate in the killing of her mother. The LRA then kidnapped Judith and her siblings and forced them to serve Joseph Kony. Thousands of children share Judith’s story. Today, the rescued child soldiers in Africa are finding healing and restoration through art.
The Rise of Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army
The World Economic Forum found that poverty, social marginalization and political disenfranchisement were fertilizers for extremist groups to take root and grow. In the 1980s, poverty, social marginalization and political disenfranchisement hit Uganda hard. Estimates determined that one-third of the population lives below the poverty line.
Uganda government officials did little to improve the dire situation. As a result, rebel groups and organizations began to pop up throughout the country. The Holy Spirit Movement, a militaristic and spiritual rebel group, formed to fight against the oppression of the people in northern Uganda. Joseph Kony joined the movement in the mid-1980s. After the Holy Spirit Movement’s defeat in 1988, Kony kept the organization. He renamed the group the Lord’s Resistance Army. Kony used religion and traditional beliefs to continue the support of the people living in northern Uganda. His operation expanded to the nearby countries of South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic. The tactics Kony and the LRA used became more violent over time.
Kony and the LRA caused the displacement of more than 1.9 million people. Authorities issued a number of arrest warrants for Kony and leaders of the LRA on counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The LRA raided villages, burned down homes and murdered or mutilated thousands of people.
Child Soldiers in Africa
Kony lacked support for his cause and army. As a result, he abducted children and forced them into his service. Estimates state that the LRA kidnapped between 30,000 and 60,000 children. The LRA trained males to be child soldiers and females to be sex slaves. Fear was a major driver for children to remain in the LRA. Many children, like Judith, had to kill their parents and other loved ones for survival.
Art Is Restoring Peace to Rescued Child Soldiers
The U.N. called the LRA crisis the “most forgotten, neglected humanitarian emergency in the world.” A 29-minute film became the most effective tool in mobilizing the world into taking action against Kony and the LRA.
Art and social media were the key components of the success of the film “KONY 2012.” The U.S. advocacy group, Invisible Children, launched a digital campaign with the release of the film. The campaign’s goal was to make the infamous warlord famous in order to mobilize world leaders to stop him. The film garnered over 100 million views in six days. Public outcry and celebrity support increased the pressure for global leaders to take action against Kony. Eventually, authorities sanctioned a universal manhunt to capture Kony and put an end to the LRA. People have rescued many of the child soldiers in Africa but Kony still remains at-large. Today, the LRA has reduced to a group of fewer than 300 members.
Art has also been an effective tool for healing and restoration for the child victims of the LRA crisis. For many of the rescued child soldiers in Africa, there were some elements in their story that were too painful to put into words. Art became an avenue for those children to confront the past and face the future. Exile International, a nonprofit organization, has been providing healing to war-affected children through art-focused trauma care since 2008.
Recently, Exile International partnered with award-winning photographer and artist Jeremy Cowart to share the faces and powerful stories of child survivors. The Poza Project utilized the children’s art and Cowart’s talent to create a healing opportunity for the children to tell their own story of survival. Unique photographs and mixed art media created by the children were available for purchase. All the proceeds helped provide art therapy and holistic rehabilitation to children survivors of war. The Poza Project showcased a dozen children including Judith.
Judith spent nearly two years in captivity before being rescued. Today, she is back in school and working to become a psychiatric doctor. With the help of The Poza Project, Judith is one step closer to her dream of helping the other victims of Kony and the LRA.
Three Tech Initiatives For Chinese Farmers
Over 800 million or 57.7 percent of people in China are using the internet. As the urban middle class continues to thrive and spend more time online, the impoverished rural communities have been lagging behind. In 2019, Chinese farmers are starting to benefit from the growing interconnectivity of the digital world. Corporations, in conjunction with the Chinese government, have developed tech initiatives for Chinese farmers to trade, learn and profit over the internet. Soon enough, rural communities should be able to unite with the middle class through e-commerce.
The Happy Farmer WeChat App
Happy Farmer is a philanthropic take on the once-popular Facebook game, FarmVille. Players harvest and cultivate crops within the various agricultural regions of China. People can spend virtual profits from these crops on coupons for real-world produce. The social media app WeChat launched Happy Farmer to take advantage of the rapid spread of attitudes and ideas across a massive audience. This allows hundreds of millions of WeChat users to share links and create groups with friends to purchase produce together.
The creator of WeChat, Tencent, developed Happy Farmer alongside the Chinese Ministry of Finance. Together, they were able to make Happy Farmer a precisely-targeted, functioning, charitable and educational tool. The game is directly based on real-world regions and their products so users can learn what region each crop comes from. This should promote an appreciation for the resources that rural counties provide. Advertisements within the game capitalize on the vast audience and all profits will go to alleviating poverty within the countries Happy Farmer is based on.
Taobao Live
Many middle-class Chinese consumers love to shop while watching live-streamed promotions. Taobao Live is China’s largest live-streaming e-commerce service. As Taobao strives to make its app the standard method of e-commerce, it is expanding to markets that have been falling behind the times. Taobao is promoting the growth of 1,000 new live-stream hosts to connect impoverished Chinese farmers with the modern Chinese consumer.
As one of the tech initiatives for Chinese farmers, the Taobao Live app features agricultural live-streams for two hours every day. The entire 15th day of each month shows agricultural live-streams specifically. Taobao Live has already been successful in promoting e-commerce as there has been an 80 percent rise in sales on its platform from poverty-stricken counties in the past six months.
The A-Idol Initiative by Alibaba AI Labs
The A-Idol Initiative provides free training in labeling and curating data to impoverished people of rural areas. This data then goes toward developing artificial intelligence through machine learning.
Women with families in poverty are often the ones to move away from their rural homes in search of employment. In order to combat this issue, women can enroll in the A-Idol Initiative to work from home instead. The skills learned in this initiative are applicable to other jobs, so workers can have mobility and security within their field.
Through these three tech initiatives for Chinese farmers, farmers should have a path into the middle class of China. Cooperation between big businesses, small businesses and the Chinese government has proven to be a formidable strategy against poverty and a growing class gap.
– Nicholas Pirhalla
Photo: Flickr
10 Facts About Child Labor in India
India is the second most populated country in the world with around 1.3 billion inhabitants and the seventh-largest country in terms of size. It is also a prominent figure in the United Nations and other international deliberative assemblies. The country’s top exports include petroleum, medicaments, jewelry, rice and diamonds with major imports consisting of gold, petroleum, coal and diamonds. India’s main trade partners are the United States, Saudi Arabia, China, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While the country wields power as a major partner in worldwide trade and holds the title of the 17th largest export economy, many Indians still struggle to make ends meet. Indian children, in particular, must carry the heavy burden of supplying for their families far more often than any child should. The following are 10 facts on the reality of child labor in India and what the country is doing to improve these children’s quality of life.
10 Facts About Child Labor in India
Although India has a long way to go to eradicate child labor, it is making serious steps towards its goal. The help of various NGOs and the improvement of existing laws should help reduce child labor in India.
– Fatemeh-Zahra Yarali
Photo: Flickr
What is Hunger?
Every day, people around the world experience those familiar sensations of emptiness and rumbling pangs in their stomach, signaling that it is time to eat. At this point, most people would get something to eat and go on with their day. Sadly, many people in the world, especially those in developing countries, do not receive this luxury. They experience chronic hunger, which is undernourishment from not ingesting enough energy to lead a normal, active life. It is difficult to empathize with what hunger feels like, to live with a body longing for nourishment, weakened by a lack of energy and unable to fulfill its basic need for food.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, an estimated one in nine people, 821 million, live with chronic hunger. It also states that the number of people living with the condition has been on the rise since 2014, with a staggering 98 percent living in developing countries.
The Consequences of Hunger
Hunger brings along with it many problems other than an aching stomach. Prolonged lack of adequate nourishment results in malnutrition, which causes the stunting of growth and development in children and wasting syndrome. Wasting syndrome is a side effect of malnutrition, in which the victim’s fat and muscle tissues break down to provide the body with nourishment. The condition results in an emaciated body and in some cases, death. In fact, malnutrition links to around 45 percent of deaths among children under the age of five, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Fortunately, some have made progress. Since 2012, the number of stunted children in the world has decreased by nine percent from 165.2 million to 150.8 million, a significant improvement.
Hunger and Poverty
Poverty is the underlying determinant in who suffers from chronic hunger. Impoverished people are unable to consistently provide substantial amounts of food for themselves or their families, as they simply cannot afford to. This inability to provide nourishment creates a vicious cycle of hunger and poverty.
Undernourished people lack the energy required to perform basic tasks and therefore are less productive. Those who were malnourished as children develop stunted physical and intellectual abilities, which results in a reduction in the level of education achieved and the individual’s income, according to UNICEF.
What Can People Do?
People can break this vicious cycle and help people suffering from chronic hunger. Organizations such as The Hunger Project, the FAO and the Gates Foundation all have initiatives aimed at helping those in need get on their feet.
The Hunger Project works to empower those suffering from hunger with the tools they need to become self-reliant. In Mbale, Uganda, the organization partnered with the local community to build a food bank where farmers are able to safely store grain, which has greatly increased their food security.
The FAO focuses on aiding governments and other organizations in implementing initiatives that aim to decrease hunger and malnourishment. A great example of this is Africa Sustainable Livestock 2050, in which the FOA helps countries such as Kenya and Ethiopia develop livestock infrastructure that will support the countries as their populations increase over the coming years.
Bill and Melinda Gates formed the Gates Foundation in 2000 with the main focus of providing internet to those who do not have access to it. Since then, the scope of the foundation’s mission has expanded to help the impoverished through global health and development initiatives. One of the foundation’s major initiatives is Seed Systems and Variety Improvement, which aims to improve seed breeding systems in Africa and India in an effort to make agriculture in those countries more sustainable.
With projects that aim to give impoverished people access to clean water, infrastructure, sustainable farming, disaster relief and education, these organizations have made significant strides.
Individuals can help eradicate chronic hunger by donating to charitable organizations or by contacting their government representatives, encouraging them to support bills and initiatives that aim to combat global hunger. Everyone can play a role and spread the word. There is a long road ahead, but with the tools available, chronic hunger can become a thing of the past.
– Shane Thoma
Photo: Flickr
The Threat that Water Scarcity Poses to Farmers
How is it possible to grow more food with less water without hurting small-scale subsistence farmers? This was a joint question in 2013 from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and later on, the Department of Science and Technology of the Government of South Africa. The result was the establishment of Securing Water for Food (SWFF) to address the increasing threat that water scarcity poses to farmers, particularly those in poverty.
Securing Water for Food
Securing Water for Food is beneficial to reducing the threat that water scarcity poses to farmers. The program operates as a grantmaker, meaning that it awards business grants to social entrepreneurs based on the viability of their idea and the ability to positively impact individuals in the agricultural community.
Between smallholder farms, families and other customers, SWFF has benefitted more than 6.25 million individuals. It has done this by teaching efficient methods of irrigation, crop rotation and technology to grow more food while using less water. According to USAID, SWFF has exhibited an extremely high return on investment. Each $1,000 of donor funding spent impacted more than 240 end users, enhanced water management on 685 hectares (~1,273 acres), decreased the consumption of water by more than 1.2 million liters (~317,000 gallons), produced more than 400 tons of produce and created more than $350 in future sales. In total, more than five million acres have benefited from improved methods of agricultural production, water storage and management.
SWFF’s Impact
Local innovators have improved lives across Latin America, Europe, Africa and Asia, and particularly in areas that are at higher risk for droughts and inconsistent precipitation. Advances such as turning organic waste into renewable energy have benefitted farmers in Uganda. Meanwhile, the adoption of sustainable cattle ranching practices in South Africa have impacted local communities and allowed women to obtain jobs as eco-rangers.
USAID estimates that approximately 70 percent of all water used goes toward agriculture. This is why the main focus of SWFF revolves around producing higher volume crops more efficiently and with less water. Across the program, farmers have experienced a variety of yield increases—some as high as 186 percent. They have also aggregately reduced water consumption by 18.6 billion liters (~4.9 million gallons) in comparison to traditional practices and bettered water storage capacity by 16.9 million liters (~4.9 million gallons).
SWFF assessments place 63 percent of innovation end-users at or near the poverty line. Additionally, 65 percent of the innovations that SWFF gave grants to aim to reduce poverty. Of the beneficiaries surveyed, 95 percent reported greater water efficiency, 90 percent stated improved access to water, 82 percent reported increased income and 72 percent displayed increased agricultural productivity.
All of these statistics illustrate how Securing Water for Food is effectively fighting to reduce poverty. As evidenced, SWFF has produced success for farmers, but it also provides new opportunities for investments and technological innovation, both of which can go towards further reducing poverty in the future. Innovators from SWFF have used their platform to leverage partnerships with outside organizations, which reduces the amount of funding they will require from aid programs in the future.
Innovators gained $350 in sales from every $1,000 of aid, which shows that aid is not static and provides dynamic benefits after the initial disbursement. Securing Water for Food is an effective example of reducing the threat that water scarcity poses to farmers, and it is just one of the many programs that USAID funds with less than one percent of the federal budget.
– Evan Williams
Photo: Flickr
3 Efforts to Protect Women’s Rights in Africa
3 Efforts to Protect Women’s Rights in Africa
In Africa, soccer is seen by many as a man’s profession; as such, female players have an enormous pay gap compared to their male counterparts (female players earn R5,000 (approximately $338) for every game won while men take home R60,000 (around $4,000).Along with a large pay gap, women’s soccer teams also receive less media coverage and funding. Many of these women are also victims of abuse and harassment as a result of being athletes. In response to all of this, many these players have been conducting protests and sit-ins. They have been supported in part by the SheFootball Initiative, a nonprofit organization that aims to empower women by educating and motivating female soccer players in Africa. The founder, Ayisat Yusuf-Aromire (a former soccer player herself), began the organization because she wanted to get rid of the cultural stigma that women should not take part in athletics. So far, Yusuf-Aromire’s work has seemed to pay off, as the organization has become a major voice in women’s soccer in Africa.
In many parts of Africa, individuals are not properly educated on safe sex practices, and this can lead to high teen pregnancy and HIV/AIDS rates. To help better educate young people about these issues, Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah, who works as the director of communications for the Association for Women’s Rights in Development, has created a blog called Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women. The blog aims to provide a safe space where African women can discuss sex and sexuality issues and become educated on safe sex. Resources like these are a great first step towards reducing rates of HIV/AIDS and teen pregnancy in Africa.
Child marriage has become increasingly prevalent in Africa, especially in Nigeria, where roughly 44 percent of girls are married before they turn 18. To combat this, Kudirat Abiola (15), Temitayo Asuni (15) and Susan Ubogu (16) began It’s Never Your Fault, a nonprofit organization that aims to reduce child marriage in Nigeria. The organization has started a petition for the government to raise the minimum age for consent to marriage from age 11 to age 18. To date, the petition has gained more than 130,000 signatures globally.
– Chelsea Wolfe
Photo: Flickr
Female Entrepreneurship in Mexico
According to a 2016/2017 study by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Mexico is one of the five countries in the world where the number of women starting their own businesses is equal to or greater than men. This is fantastic news because if men and women participate equally in the economy, Mexico’s GDP could increase by 43 percent or $810 billion. From 2000 to 2010 alone, women’s participation in the workforce decreased extreme poverty by 30 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean. With that increase in female entrepreneurship in Mexico, women are able to become more independent, but many women still face powerful barriers in starting their own business.
Many women, especially in subsistence settings, lack access to training, financing and markets, and face physical, sexual and economic violence. The average female-headed household earns $507 a month in urban areas and $273 a month in rural areas while male-led households earn $780 a month in urban areas and $351 a month in rural areas. The burden of domestic tasks also falls mostly on women. A 2009 survey found that men spend an average of 53 hours a week on economic activities and 12 hours on domestic tasks while women spend an average of 40 to 45 hours a week earning money and 20 hours maintaining the family and household.
The Marketplace Literacy Project
Elena Olascoaga, a gender and development consultant and former project manager for the Marketplace Literacy Project in Mexico, is very familiar with the challenge successful female entrepreneurship in Mexico faces. Olascoaga describes the Marketplace Literacy Project as an initiative to help people in subsistence settings become entrepreneurs by acknowledging the skills they already have in the marketplace and giving them the tools to build on and market pre-existing skills.
According to Olascoaga, the founder of this methodology and workshop program, Professor Madhu Viswanathan, tried to bring this program to Mexico for a long time before finding a U.S. State Department grant intended for breaking cycles of violence against women due to economic dependency. He initially designed the program to be gender-neutral so Olascoaga came in because her background in gender consultancy allowed her to effectively factor the unique challenges female entrepreneurship in Mexico faces to the workshops. She added a new program to the methodology that she called autonomy literacy, because, although the program teaches participants to create their own income, it is often difficult for people in abusive situations to start a business, even if they have the know-how.
The Need for Female Entrepreneurship in Mexico
While Mexico has made great strides to improve gender equality, there is often still a cultural emphasis for women to become mothers and housewives, to a point where Olascoaga describes economic dependence as romanticized. Many consider women lucky if they do not have to work because their husband provides food and shelter. However, this kind of love can be a trap. If the husband is the only provider, then the wife is not building her own savings or gaining experience in the workforce. “If something goes wrong in the relationship, then they have nowhere else to go,” she said.
In an interview by Forbes Magazine, hotel owner Gina Lozada said that “…Most parents don’t educate their girls to succeed in business. On the contrary, it is normal that women are raised to believe that their goal should be to marry and take care of the family.” Often, because female entrepreneurship in Mexico does not receive emphasis, women feel that they do not have many options and lack the confidence to start their own company.
Olascoaga observes that, because women in subsistence settings feel that they cannot strike out of their own, they often stay with their abuser. “A common phrase is no se hacer nada which is I don’t know how to do anything,” she says. Autonomy training, when combined with marketplace literacy training, teaches women that they do know how to do something. For example, they might be good cooks or skilled embroiderers. The methodology of the Marketplace Literacy Project is to build on preexisting knowledge and teach women to recognize their skills and to think strategically about their resources.
Autonomy Literacy
“We want women to be aware that they can create their income,” said Olascoaga. In the workshops, the Marketplace Literacy Project works with women in two age groups, women older than 18 and girls 14 to 18 years old. In her experience, almost all the women older than 18 had been in violent relationships where they stayed with their aggressors because they did not have economic independence. Some among the younger group were already mothers and in violent relationships where they had the potential to work and build skills, but their partners would not let them.
As the younger group went through the program, though, many of them began to realize that their mothers, aunts and other relatives were living in similar situations. One struggle that she noted when working with women is that they will not recognize that they are living in an abusive situation, especially to a group of strangers, so they instead speak in hypotheticals. The participants may know someone in this situation, and if they did, they would express how they could help.
The Marketplace Literacy Project, though, has helped give more than 4,500 women tools for economic independence since its start in 2016. Olascoaga said that those who participate have two major takeaways. The first is that autonomy becomes a very important concept and the second is that they do not need money to start a business. Olascoaga was happy to report that women will often come up to her and say that, after the workshop, they started businesses by selling cookies or embroidering. “It might seem small to us,” Olascoaga said, “but for them, it’s a really big deal.”
With female entrepreneurship in Mexico on the rise, more and more women are not only finding empowerment in their lives but changing the world around them by challenging a culture that often devalues their work.
– Katharine Hanifen
Photo: Flickr
The Role of Women in Peace and Security in Afghanistan
In mid-June, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing to discuss the importance of women in peace and security, a follow-up to the Women, Peace, and Security Act (WPS) passed in 2017. This particular hearing responds to the recently published White House Strategy that sets various objectives and goals to diversify the roles women play in the peace process and increase women’s leadership by providing them with the resources, skills, and support needed to secure successful peace agreements.
The members of the committee, as well as the testimonies, emphasized the opportunity to put these plans into immediate action in Afghanistan. The U.S. has committed to peace negotiations with the Taliban but each agreement has failed due to miscommunication, stalemates, or other political reasons. Palwasha Kakar, Senior Program Officer for the U.S. Institute of Peace, stated that including Afghan women in peace and security negotiations is essential to the success and sustainability of peace and recovery in Afghanistan.
Women in Afghanistan
The Taliban government of Afghanistan held power from 1996 to 2001, during which Afghan women were stripped of natural rights–they were prevented from obtaining an education and job, showing skin in public and leaving the house without a male chaperone. Rape and violence against women were widespread until U.S. military action overthrew the regime. A driving factor of U.S. intervention 18 years ago was to protect Afghan women from threats and actions against their human rights. Despite the tremendous gains women have achieved in political, economic and social life since 2001, women still struggle to have a seat at the peace talk table.
However, Afghan women have found ways to participate at a local level. Women have brokered local deals by negotiating directly with Taliban leaders; for example, Afghan women’s communication with the wives of the Taliban helped facilitate the release of hostages several times. Second, Afghan women use their access to information to act as informants for the U.S. and its partners. Third, Afghan women mobilize the public by increasing public awareness and support for the peace process. Fourth, Afghan women have mobilized support across various ethnic lines to push for a unified commitment to equal rights for all Afghan citizens.
Impact of Women on the Peace Process
On a local level, Afghan women in peace and security positions have made significant achievements for Afghanistan and its cities. However, on a global level, women were only included in two out of 23 rounds of negotiations with the Taliban between 2005 and 2014. Yet research shows that women are a necessary asset at the negotiation table. When women are involved in peace agreements, they are 64 percent less likely to fail and 35 percent more likely to last more than 15 years. In her testimonial, Jamille Bigio argues that women in peace and security negotiations are more likely to deescalate tensions and stabilize their communities. Therefore, closing the gender gap will improve a country’s conditions.
Four Focus Areas Outlined in the WPS Strategy
The outcome of this hearing suggests that women’s participation in Afghanistan is essential to create a stable and sustainable agreement. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee plans to simultaneously use and revise the following four goals from the WPS Strategy to encourage multi-agency resources and support for women’s participation in Afghanistan peace talks.
Women peacekeepers receive more trust from their communities and therefore have more power to increase participation among other women. Further, research shows that women are more likely to address social issues during negotiations, which helps communities recover. Women’s participation increases the likelihood of reaching a sustainable agreement.
Women are essential for achieving peace and security in Afghanistan, and vice versa. The U.S. is more likely to bring peace to a hostile environment with women’s participation. As Sen. Tim Kaine said at the hearing, “We [U.S] have incredible power to give people hope and inspiration, and I hope we will continue to do it. And I think there’s a lot of women in the world who really have grown to count on us during the years, and I hope we don’t let them down.”
– Haley Myers
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