information and Stories about woman and female empowerment.

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What is Asirvad Microfinance?

Asirvad Microfinance Initiative India
In short, Asirvad Microfinance is an organization that aims to provide services to poor women in India. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, it offers an income generation program, through “micro enterprise, housing and festival loans.” According to CNN Money, Microfinance groups are nonprofit, and help “fill the gap” when entrepreneurs can’t get loans. They lend money, but usually smaller amounts under $35,000, to companies with just a few employees. CNN Money said their guidelines for lending are “much more flexible than traditional banks.”

Asirvad lends between 50,000 and 100,000 Indian rupees to people doing business or improving current business. This amounts to about US$812 to US$1,628. These loans do have stipulations. For instance, a rural household income cannot exceed 60,000 rupees a year, and urban or “semi-urban” households cannot exceed 120,000 rupees a year. The borrower also cannot be more than 50,000 rupees in debt already.

The company was founded in 2007, and is based in Chennai, India, though it has branches in eight other cities in India. Another of Asirvad’s goals is to “empower at least one million families by 2013 by providing financial assistance.” Asirvad is managed by a team of seven people.

They define their values by way of an acronym:

                A for acceptance,

                S for support,

                I for integrity,

                R for resilience,

                V for viable,

                A for adaptable,

                D for dependable.

Asirvad is trying to lend a minimum of one billion rupees to the women of urban and rural India by 2015. They intend to “organize groups of committed poor women” and hope to provide financial services “in a sustainable manner” with an eye trained on eradicating poverty “through viable income generation activities.”

– Alycia Rock

Sources: Asirvad Microfinance: Vision, Asirvad Microfinance, CNN, Business Week
Photo: Akhilak.com

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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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Gender Equality Still an Important Goal

gender-equality-still-important
As the 2015 target date for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)  rapidly approaches, there is much discussion on the post-2015 MDGs. A coalition of charities and campaign groups plans to ask the leaders at this year’s UN General Assembly to take a holistic approach to ending global poverty.

This holistic approach targets those most vulnerable demographics: women and girls. The coalition argues that by empowering women and girls, the true root causes of poverty will be addressed.

There is concern that the current MDG goal of gender equality will be replaced with a watered-down goal addressing broader inequality concerns. However, the coalition believes that gender equality was a neglected MDG goal the first time around and, therefore, needs to be an area of focus in the post-2015 goals.

Countries with greater gender equality in education and employment have stronger economic growth and human development. Therefore, empowering women and girls creates a stronger country and world. Empowering women and girls will help end world poverty.

Empowering women and girls starts with their physical health. By providing accessible and affordable healthcare, core concerns such as maternal health, gender equality, and sexual and reproductive health and rights will be addressed. Currently, the main concerns include the lack of healthcare and sexual and reproductive health services for women, as well as the lack of medical care for their children.

Many women and girls die from inadequate healthcare. By addressing these vital needs, it is estimated that 79,000 maternal deaths, most of which occur in sub-Saharan Africa, would be prevented.

Recognizing that mothers sustain and create life, the coalition is urging the Member States to include a goal that focuses explicitly  on gender and equality. According to Tewodros Melesse, the Director General of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), a world with gender equality is a “world of justice, choice, and well being for all.”

Working on the MDGs has provided the world with many lessons. Perhaps the most valuable of these is that progress is likely to be uneven – and at times reversed – if gender equality is not viewed and addressed as a vital goal.

– Caressa Kruth

Sources: News Afrique Informations, The Guardian
Photo: A Nation of Moms

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Uganda to Provide Contraception for Girls

Uganda High School Contraception Women Reproductive Rights
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

Female_Education_Fights_Poverty_Afghan_Girl_In_School
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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UN’s “Too Young to Wed” Discussion

The United Nations’ recent session on forced marriage raised an issue many attendees called “unacceptable.” Arranged marriages are a cultural tradition in many countries; however, they often lead to “child brides” dropping out of school at the orders of their husbands and pregnancy complications for young girls.

Pregnancy complications commonly occur for young women under the age of 15. The risk of dying during childbirth is five times more likely to happen than for women who are in their 20s. Women under the age of 18 are also at a higher risk of dying during the first year of their child’s life. Some may be surprised to learn that childbirth, not disease, is the leading cause of death for girls between 15 and 18 years old.

Poverty plays a crucial role in forced marriages as well. A study by Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird’s office found that impoverished girls are two times more likely to marry before they are 18. Because the arranged marriages of young girls is a tradition in some countries, Baird says he has been discouraged from publicly criticizing it at times. This line of thinking, Baird explains, has to stop.

Among the riveting anecdotes about girls being forced into wedding older men included the story of how one young girl witnessed the forced marriage of one of her friends to a 40-year-old man who forbade her from attending school. Another friend of the girl was married at a young age and beaten by her husband after giving birth to a girl instead of a boy.

Baird is working with international organizations to make forced marriages for girls a thing of the past. He is adamant that “in a generation, we can end this practice.”
Baird and his supporters are combining their efforts with those of the United Nations and its global goals for 2015, which include universal access to contraceptives as well as improved newborn and maternal health.

– Mary Penn

Sources: CBC News, Too Young To Wed
Photo: Living With Libby

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Failure to Meet Millennium Goals for Women Will Have Lasting Echoes

UN_Failure_to_Meet_Womens_Needs
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

Ethiopian Women Take Charge with Budget Planning

Ethiopian_women_getting_water
In the Yefag kebale (ward), a small village in northern Ethiopia, women are being trained in gender-responsive planning and budgeting that ensures both men and women beneficiaries are able to contribute to discussions regarding the use and distribution of resources. The training, provided by the NGO Poverty Action Network of Ethiopia (PANE) and supported by UN Women, is enabling women to analyze government plans and budgets for their kebale, and make sure that the needs of men and women are equally prioritized and served.

PANE unites Ethiopian residents and international charities in the goal of reducing poverty and creating sustainable development through the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). PANE increases public awareness of the MDGs and encourages the formation of partnerships with community, regional, national and international organizations in order to meet the goals.

In Ethiopia, PANE has worked to educate women about financial budgeting and planning, and encourages them to identify priority areas in their communities. For the women in the Yefag kebale, one issue that has been highlighted is water. In Ethiopia, only 36 percent of the population has access to a source of drinking water within a 30-minute walk. For the huge number women and girls who are responsible for collecting water, the long walk to collect water, often through isolated and muddy paths, leaves them vulnerable to attacks and sexual violence.

In the Yefag kebale, 11 water spots serve the population of about 3,000. There is a committee for managing each spot, including deciding on its location, design, access and maintenance fees. Melkam Embiale, representative of the women of the village, explains that when all the committee members were men, they did not understand the requirements for the water spots because they were not responsible for carrying the water. “Before, women’s perspectives were not taken into account in the planning and budgeting process,” said Melkam. But recently, women have secured three of out seven seats on every water committee, enabling them to be able to crucially analyze the needs of the community. “The selected women push for our agenda, which is to construct the water spots closer to the village,” says Melkam.

When women have the ability to make decisions about aspects of community life that directly affect them, it positively impacts that whole community. By acknowledging the importance of women’s role in the economy, the Yefag kebale is taking steps to overturn patriarchal structures. Working from the success of this small village, PANE plans to expand its gender-responsive budgeting initiative to more communities in the region. The program also looks to move up through local structures to the national government, in order to open dialogues with decision-makers at the senior level. “Now we participate at the kebale level, but we want to participate at the district level as well,” says Melkam, suggesting that she and the other women in her village are not planning to stop any time soon.

– Chloe Isacke

Sources: UN Women, PANE

Photo: Water Encyclopedia

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African Women’s Entrepreneur Program (AWEP)

african-women-entrepreneur-program
Last week, Washington welcomed 30 small and medium-sized female business owners from 27 countries in Africa, who are participants in the African Women’s Entrepreneur Program (AWEP). Every year, 30 female entrepreneurs are invited to the U.S. to attend professional development meetings and network with U.S. policy makers, companies, industry associations, nonprofit groups, and multilateral development organizations. For the past two weeks, the women have traveled throughout the U.S. to meet with scores of professionals in cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago and Seattle.

The visit marks three years of success for AWEP, which was launched by the U.S. Department of State in July 2010. The program is an outreach, education, and engagement initiative that works with African women entrepreneurs in several main focus areas. AWEP supports the Presidential Policy Directive on U.S. strategy toward Sub-Saharan Africa by operating on two parallels: it spurs economic growth and trade by involving female entrepreneurs in the sector, and promotes opportunity and development throughout the continent for women and youth.

The Department of State acknowledges that supporting growth in Africa is economically and politically vital; doing so opens up trade to U.S. markets and creates positive business environments both at home and abroad. In addition, AWEP helps to empower women in their respective countries; in Africa, women are the backbone of communities, and by enabling them to utilize their economic power, the program is helping to reduce the gender gap in education and improve health, political participation and economic inclusion.

The women in the program include Mame Diene from Senegal, whose organic cosmetics and nutraceuticals company, Bioessence Laboratories, employs almost 4,000 people. The visit to Washington enabled Ms. Diene and her peers to discuss business growth and female empowerment in Africa. When the women return to their countries, they join AWEP chapters where they can connect with other successful businesswomen; by building networks, the initiative is enabling these women to become voices for social advocacy in their communities.

AWEP is a prime example of U.S. commitment to foreign investment in developing regions. Globally, women constitute 50% of the global population and 40% of the global workforce, yet they own just 1% of the world’s wealth. By providing a platform from which women can effectively run their own businesses, AWEP is resulting in positive economic, social and political changes that are beneficial for the U.S. both abroad and at home.

– Chloe Isacke
Sources: DipNote, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State

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LandWise: Empowering Women

landwise
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