Archive for category: Women and Female Empowerment

information and Stories about woman and female empowerment.

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“Womenomics:” Japan Integrates Women to Boost GDP

On September 26, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe addressed the United Nations General Assembly, discussing his initiatives to create Japanese “womenomics,” an economic theory that posits the advancement and success of women in a society as directly correlated to the country’s larger growth rate.

The idea of utilizing Japan’s greatest resource—its women—is not entirely new. In 1999, Kathy Matsui, along with a variety of other employees at Goldman Sachs addressed a similar topic, suggesting that Japan could significantly increase its gross domestic product (GDP) by about 15 percent by better integrating its women.

In order to implement “womenomics,” the Japanese government will contribute over $3 billion by 2016 to increase female participation in society, aid in female healthcare costs, mitigate violence against women, and further empower women in a variety of other realms.

In a country with a rapidly shrinking population and a remarkably low birthrate, a successful implementation of “womenomics” is crucial. By introducing large numbers of women to the workforce, Japan will vastly benefit both economically and demographically. Clearly, women are the key to Japan’s future.

Of course, “womenomics” also exists as a crucial necessity in the rest of the world, particularly in developing regions like Africa. Fortunately, the Japanese government has recognized this and is now providing enormous support to Africa’s women.

Instead of working within the donor culture of international development, Japan is striving to help transform agriculture in Africa, a domain primarily characterized by female laborers. Japanese efforts have already proven successful, as many farmers’ incomes have doubled in regions of Kenya.

Tellingly, African and Japanese women—as well as their female counterparts everywhere—are the key to a thriving economy. Yet, without egalitarian access to governmental resources and support, they cannot be empowered economically. Thus, it is the responsibility of governments everywhere to support their female citizens, and thereby, support themselves.

– Anna Purcell

Sources: United Nations, Wall Street Journal
Sources: Japan Today

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Uganda to Provide Contraception for Girls

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In an effort to reduce the number of women who die from maternal complications, Uganda’s government is considering a plan to provide contraception to every Ugandan women between the ages of 14 and 18.

In Uganda, an estimated 16 women die every day from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. For every woman who dies, an additional 15 women develop complications, such as fistulas. These statistics make it unlikely that Uganda will achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goal of reducing maternal mortality by 75 percent by the 2015 deadline.

During a meeting organized by the Ugandan health ministry earlier this month, Sarah Opendi, the state minister for primary health care, said it was “unethical” to allow Uganda’s female citizens to continue to die from easily preventable complications

Among the most fatal of these complications are hemorrhaging, high blood pressure, and contraction of infectious diseases due to weakened immune systems. However, many young women also die from self-induced abortions.

“You don’t know what some of these girls go through,” Opendi said. “When they can’t confide in anyone and are desperate to get the fetus out they will do anything.”

Afraid to confide in their parents and usually impregnated by classmates who are also unable to support a child,  many girls try to terminate their own pregnancies, and often die in the process.

To address this problem, the Ugandan government plans to set up youth centers in schools and hospitals, where young girls can receive proper counseling. The government is likely to also provide condoms and contraceptive pills.

John Cooper, the executive director of Uganda Family Planning Consortium, believes that every woman should have a child by choice, not chance. Currently, of the Ugandan women who get pregnant, half of the pregnancies are unwanted.

“Now, we can’t want to reduce the numbers of women who dies while giving birth and not want to provide women with contraception that can reduce their fertility,” said Cooper.

The Ugandan minister must first convince several critics before the government’s plan to provide contraception to every woman between 14 and 18 is implemented. But this may be the country’s only option. Uganda’s population currently stands at over 34 million, and the country’s fertility rate is 6.7 percent. Moreover, women in rural areas lacking medical resources may produce twice as many children.

If the movement to provide contraception passes, the government must turn to its next issue in the fight to lower maternal mortality and limit population: the need to allocate more funding and resources to Uganda’s impoverished rural regions.

– Scarlet Shelton

Sources: New Vision, Index Mundi, all Africa
Photo: Books For Africa

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Why Female Education Fights Poverty

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While providing equal education to girls is necessary from a moral standpoint, it is also essential for a more peaceful and poverty-free world.

Education affects the age at which women marry and have children. Therefore, until girls have equal access to quality education, maternal mortality, overpopulation, and other factors contributing to poverty will continue to terrorize our world.

In sub-Saharan Africa, and South and West Asia, child marriage affects 1 in 8 girls. By the age of 17, 1 in 7 females will have their first child. Since girls in these areas are not given access to education or job opportunities, they are often locked into these marriages, and forced to become mothers far before they are ready.

In the long run, these women can’t afford to take care of their children or even attain proper health services during labor. The line of poverty continues as children are born into impoverished families that are unable to help their offspring escape this cycle.

Providing women with a secondary education brings enormous benefits to both women and to the world. Educated women are empowered women. They can make their own choices and follow their own dreams. If girls receive a secondary education, 64 percent of them won’t get married while still attending school. By giving girls a chance to pursue their own future and making them aware of the risks associated with consecutive childbearing, the vicious cycle will finally reach its end.

The advantages in investing in female education are endless – for individuals, for the fight against poverty, and for lowering child mortality rates. The rise in female education between 1970 and 2009 prevented more than 4 million child deaths. With the Millennium Development Goals still met, perhaps this is an essential place for the U.N. to make a change.

– Sonia Aviv

Sources: Global Post, TIME, Huffington Post
Photo: The Guardian

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Failure to Meet Millennium Goals for Women Will Have Lasting Echoes

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Of all the Millennium Development Goals adopted by the UN, those pertaining to the reproductive health of women seem most likely to be unmet when the 2015 deadline hits. Whatever the other MDG successes, the failure to meet the reasonable objectives set for women should be remembered as a defining symbol of the UN’s ability to get things done in 2015. The issue of reproductive health in and of itself is insufficient to merit that reaction, but it does stand as a weather-vane to all kinds of gender-related issues; it points to a future of injustice.

The Millennium Development Goals in question were meant to achieve universal reproductive health and reduce maternal mortality rates by 75 percent of their 1990 levels. Currently, the rates remain double their intended 2015 targets. As Eva Joly, Chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Development, observed, “It is a failure of the fight against poverty…but it is also linked to other questions.”

The “questions” which have stymied progress on the issue are mainly cultural in nature. Throughout the world, for many hundreds or even thousands of years, women have been viewed as an inferior sex, in some times and places ranking below valued animals such as horses. From the spatial organization of public and private spaces and places, the norms of social interaction, and the ratio of economic independence, to acceptable activities, clothing, and even mentality, women have long been the second sex.

In failing to keep its MDGs, the UN is not only harming today and tomorrow’s women biologically, it fails to make any headway in provoking a cultural revolution which will allow women to be recognized as equally valuable human beings.

Such sentiments may be senseless to men living in particularly sexist cultures. Indeed, there is a strong argument to make for abstaining from building a homogenous global culture which, conveniently enough, is predicated on modern, Western values, and sees all deviation from that standard as unhealthy, unjust, and immoral. Cultural diversity makes humanity strong, and those who pine for days of a culturally unified humanity may wish to second-guess some of their assumptions.

But the UN has made it clear that it does not intend to allow some cultures to continue to exist according to their traditional ways if those traditions conflict with what the UN perceives to be universal rights. And in that light, the UN has failed to convince these disparate cultures that the lives of their women are worth the cost to be saved from death or trauma in childbirth.

When 2015 comes around, the UN will doubtlessly celebrate their many achievements, as well they should. The effort to meet the Millennium Development Goals has been well spent, and many of the results from it are incontrovertibly good. But the UN should not forget that in this major arena, it has failed.

– Alex Pusateri

Sources: Euractiv, The Atlantic, AWID
Photo: The Gaurdian

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LandWise: Empowering Women

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Landesa Center for Women’s Land Rights, a capacity building organization, has recently launched LandWise, a free online searchable database and tool. LandWise provides important information and practical applications that may be used for capacity building and technological assistance for strengthening women’s land rights across the globe.

In many places across the world, women’s land tenure is not recognized or is consistently undermined. Without rights to their land, women lack the ability to use, control, and transfer this asset. In some areas, men may have sole control of land that is owned by their wife. The absence of legal land ownership by women is recognized as a constraint for overcoming rural poverty. Without legal ownership of this valuable asset, women are placed in a precarious position where they may lose their family’s only form of income.

There are many facets to women’s rights to land that must be addressed. The country’s legal codes, cultural norms, and administration all play a part in this problem, since these factors can often be very complex and difficult to determine. Landesa’s LandWise seeks to organize this information in an easily searchable database that practitioners may access. While LandWise is not intended to take the place of field work, it will help with the initial research, since the legal codes that govern land rights are often difficult to uncover. The issue of land rights is often bound up with family and marriage law as well as property law. LandWise organizes these laws in an easily searchable database.

Sometimes, rural women are unaware of the rights they have under law. In these cases, practitioners can use the research gathered to engage women in clinics or information sessions. In areas where women’s land rights are not legally codified practitioners may use advocacy to engage civil society and government officials and promote policy recommendations.

LandWise also provides Practice Guides. The Practice Guides help practitioners use the information provided on the database. The Guides include checklists that help analyze the issues that may affect women and men differently in regards to property rights. In addition to the legal codes provided on LandWise, users also receive information regarding how the law is in fact carried out and cultural norms that may affect its implementation.

LandWise is overseen by a full-time librarian. Practitioners in the field are encouraged to submit information that they may come across to LandWise in order to help expand its database.

– Callie D. Coleman

Sources: IFAD, LandWise, Landesa Center for Women’s Land Rights
Photo: Landesa

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Project Concern International

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Project Concern International (PCI) is an organization which seeks to to prevent disease, improve community health, and promote sustainable development worldwide. PCI was founded in 1961 by Dr. James Turpin after saving the lives of two children suffering from pneumonia while working in a Tijuana clinic. This experience inspired the young doctor to go on and forever change the lives of millions. PCI envisions a world in which resources are abundant and shared, communities are capable of providing for the basic health and well-being of its members, and children and families can achieve lives of hope, good health and self-sufficiency. PCI conducts its work through field offices in host countries where directors can live in the area and get an intimate understanding of local needs.

Working in 16 countries, PCI hopes to reach at least 5 million people per year with its services. Overtime, PCI has expanded its reach through increased funding: from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to government grants to the Starbucks foundation, PCI has a well rounded list of supporters. PCI’s ultimate goals include addressing the root causes of poverty and poor health; working with the community to leverage their assets, capabilities and goals to create community-inclusive solutions; implementing holistic solutions; cultivating long-standing relationships with community leaders, investors, and stakeholders to catalyze the impact of aid spent; and developing tools which measure the long-term success of such programs. PCI addresses poverty through programs focused on women’s empowerment & poverty, children’s health, disease prevention, food & water programs, and disaster relief & recovery. Between 2013-2016, PCI hopes to reach over 10 million people worldwide and become a leader in building community capacity, resilience and self-sufficiency.

In addition to its programs worldwide, PCI also has a series of initiatives to further promote its goals. These intiatives include: Women Empowered, Legacy, Who Cares? and SHE.

  • Women Empowered: Established in May of this year, Women Empowered is an initiative in support of women’s equality, human rights and success. PCI believes that women are the solution to poverty, poor health and vulnerability and that through WE, women can attain social and economic empowerment. WE programs are currently being implemented in Guatemala, Bolivia, Botswana, and Malawi. One such success story comes from Maweta in Zambia. After raising six children of her own, Maweta returned to parenthood to raise her grandchildren after their parents died from AIDS. Without a steady source of income, Maweta struggled to provide for her grandchildren. After attending a community orientation hosted by PCI, Maweta began mobilizing women in her community to form a self-help group. Nine months later, Maweta has learned how to read and write, perform basic accounting and save $60 by selling mangoes to her community. Maweta has since received a loan to start a small business. Maweta buys food in bulk, repackages it into smaller quantities and sells these to her village. Since starting the business, Maweta has been able to provide for her grandchildren’s basic needs and education.
  • Legacy: PCI’s Legacy Programs focus on maternal/child health and nutrition, as well as economic empowerment. As the name suggests, ‘Legacy’ for PCI means consistent and compassionate commitment to the communities involved. These programs include: Well Baby clinics, Ventanilla de Salud (VDS), Casa Materna, and the Street and Working Children Program. Ventanilla de Salud (VDS) targets at risk immigrant populations near the border, by providing basic health and community services, while these families are waiting for service at the Mexican consulate. VDS has reached more than 41,000 people with health education information and nearly 20,000 with HIV/AIDS prevention messages. However, the VDS program suffers from a lack of funding and has been scaled back by more than 25 percent.
  • Who Cares?: An online campaign which celebrates, recognizes and encourages those who are giving back to the greater good. Who Cares? provides volunteers with the opportunity to network, share stories, or just get motivated about a cause. Who Cares targets the youth and young adults because they believe that the ability of today’s youth to mobilize others is huge, yet largely untapped. In addition, Who Cares provides tools to help the youth mobilize others and make their efforts pay off.
  • SHE: SHE, which is short for Strong, Health and Empowered, is a group of ambassadors who dedicate their time to PCI’s projects across the globe. These ambassadors work within the community to promote women’s empowerment and find innovative solutions to ensure that women lead strong, healthy lives.

To learn more about PCI’s work, explore PCIglobal.org for more info.

– Kelsey Ziomek

Sources: PCI Global, The San Diego Foundation, Washington Global Health Alliance, Coronado Eagle

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5 Powerful Advocates of Female Education

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1. Malala Yousafzai works tirelessly as a young advocate for female education, despite being shot in the head last year by the Taliban for these very same efforts. She—in her bravery and brilliance– exemplifies the struggle for girls’ education everywhere.

2. Hillary Rodham Clinton, having served as the first lady and Secretary of State, is now a partner with her husband and daughter at the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. Within the organization, she has committed herself to improving access to female education and empowering women worldwide.

3. Richard Robbins directed Girl Rising, the extremely popular new documentary that tells the stories of nine struggling girls in the developing world. The film, which has met with great success, espouses the urgent global need for equal access to education.

4. Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn published “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide” in 2010, a compelling journalistic account of the developing world, and more specifically, of its disadvantaged women. The book, which spans the entire globe and a diverse set of lifestyles, seems to somehow convey a singular edict: in order to progess—particularly in the developing world– we must provide all women access to an adequate education.

5. Lawrence Chickering has worked for more than thirty years in order to improve the conditions of girls in the developing world, particularly in India, a country where 40% of women are not educated beyond the fifth grade level. His NGO, Educate Girls Globally, has significantly improved female enrollment, retention, and performance in India’s government schools, giving girls access to a variety of transformative resources.

– Anna Purcell

Sources: CBS News, Huffington Post, The Guardian

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Malala Day: July 12, 2013

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Perhaps no adolescent in the world is regarded with more widespread veneration than sixteen-year-old Malala Yousafzai, the well-known Pakistani advocate for female education who was shot by the Taliban for her convictions in October 2012. Seriously injured from the shooting, Malala was immediately flown to the United Kingdom to undergo a series of emergency operations. Miraculously, she recovered.

Just over a year later, Malala is back in school. However, her life is far from blithe—the urgency for access to education for all girls is ever present. Thus, Malala continues to ceaselessly advocate for girl’s rights, disseminating her message on the global stage.

In order to honor her prodigious efforts in the name of girls everywhere, the United Nations hosted Malala Day on July 12, 2013, her sixteenth birthday. The event—which evolved to be known as “Malala Day”—included a speech by Malala herself, pushing for female education everywhere.

Standing amongst the most powerful leaders in the world, Malala spoke confidently. She beseeched courage from the world’s women: “Let us pick up our books and pens. They are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one pen and one book can change the world. Education is the only solution.”

She then addressed the personal, demonstrating the unwavering nature of her principles: “The terrorists thought that they would change my aims and stop my ambitions but nothing changed in my life, except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage were born.”

In a world where 115 schools were attacked last year in Mali, 165 in Yemen, 321 in occupied Palestine, and 167 in Afghanistan, Malala’s struggle has never been more pressing.

– Anna Purcell

Sources: AlJazeera, The Guardian
Photo: National Secular Society

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Improving Access to Reproductive Health Services

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Improving access to reproductive health services in the developing world is critical to poverty alleviation. Pregnancy and childbirth-related complications are a leading cause of death of girls, aged 15 to 19, in developing countries. An estimated 7.3 million girls under age 18 give birth each year, and a great percentage of births occur in Africa. To counter this, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has announced it will partner with eight African countries to improve access to reproductive health services for millions of girls. The programs will span over the next three years, and will hopefully make a difference in lives of millions of young people.

“We are working specifically to ensure that the continent’s adolescent girls, between the ages of 15 and 19 – some 45 million of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa – get a good education, are able to decide whether and when to marry and have children, are protected from HIV, remain safe from violence, and have their fair share of opportunities to work and contribute to the economic development of their countries,” said UNFPA Executive Director Babatunde Osotimehin.

UNFPA will partner with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Tunisia. The programs will deliver comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services for young people. The hope is to reach disadvantaged and impoverished girls who are most at risk for poor sexual and reproductive health, violence and exploitation.

UNFPA programs will ensure young people have access to age-appropriate sex education, whether they are in school or out, to prepare them for adult life. The programs will bring together governments, young people, the private sector and other stakeholders to access the needs of young people.

UNFPA is the lead United Nations agency that promotes sexual and reproductive health services. They are at work in 150 countries, ensuring that young people have the information, services, and supplies they need to make safe and healthy decisions.

“Over the next three years, in partnership with governments and young people themselves, we will commit to making a tangible difference in the lives of millions of young people right across the continent. It is their rights we must uphold and it is they who are our best hope for a prosperous and peaceful Africa,” said Dr. Osotimehin.

– Catherine Ulrich
Sources: UNFPA, UN News
Photo: Join Tokyo

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Women’s Disempowerment in Yemen

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In Yemen, the custom of early marriage just met a vocal challenger.

Going viral last week was a video of 11-year-old Nada al-Ahdal ranting about her parents’ decision to forcibly marry her off to a much older man. “What have the children done wrong? Why do you marry them off like that?” she asks the camera. Her powerful words have touched a delicate nerve amongst Yemenis, some of whom have upheld and continue to practice the custom of early marriange for generations. According to a 2006 joint report by the Ministry of Public Health and Population, the Pan-Arab Project for Family Health and UNICEF, this tradition is still widely practiced: 52% of Yemeni women and girls are married by the time they turn 18.

The recent video highlights Yemen’s history of early marriage laws and the government’s and society’s unwillingness to modernize conceptions of marriage. In 1994, the official age for lawful marriage stood at 15. Five years later, the law was abolished on religious grounds, eliminating a minimum age for early marriage. A brief legislative effort in 2009 to amend the situation was ultimately stalled and aborted, despite that fact that Yemen is party to multiple international treaties that require married couples to be at least 18 years old. Overall, the issue remains to be addressed, leaving countless children susceptible to premature marriage and the social and economic disadvantages that come with it.

Interviews with Yemeni girls and women reveal troubling facts. In rural areas, some girls were married off at the age of 8. Once married, women often have little power in their marriages which can also mean they have limited control over the timing and spacing of children, which increases the risk of reproductive health problems. Early marriage also diminishes the chance that wives will return to school to complete their education, putting them at a distinct social and economic disadvantage. Verbal and physical abuse against women is also prevalent in early marriages in Yemen.

In some ways, Nada al-Ahdal’s words do not just refute the practice of robbing girls of their childhood and sexual purity; they also underline the crucial “cycle of poverty and early marriage” that plagues tens of millions of women around the world. Poverty and early marriage tend to be mutually reinforcing phenomena: girls born into poverty are more likely to have mothers who ‘transmit intergenerational poverty’ and lack social assets and networks. In addition, early marriages greatly increase the chance that young girls will live in poverty. The cycle, parallel to the strong customary tradition of early marriage most prevalent in rural areas, reinforces young women’s roles as undereducated child-bearers with limited social networks.

Nada al-Ahdal eloquently defends her decision to flee from arranged marriage. But behind her words lies Yemen’s ugly reality of women’s disempowerment and its central role in the country’s greater puzzle of poverty reduction and economic growth. As one of the poorest nations on earth and a hotbed of terrorist activity, poverty in Yemen has resulted in a globally destabilizing situation. Instituting a minimum age for marriage could be a key policy for addressing women’s inequality and poverty. In doing so, Yemen would have a more solid foundation for development and more human capital to support its economy.

– Zach Crawford

Sources: BBC, Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS), Human Rights Watch, Save the Children’s “Champions for Children” report, Washington Post
Photo: Washington Post