EMIC Media is monitoring the progress of this campaign through women's economic empowerment media [WECOEMP] www.emic-media.com  

 

UN push to include women on G20 agenda

By:Nick Perry, AAP 

August 29, 2014 5:03PM

THE world's foremost advocate for women's empowerment is urging Australia to make gender equality a key goal at this year's G20 or risk further entrenching global inequality. 

UN Women executive director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is challenging Australia to think outside its narrow growth and investment agenda when it hosts the major economic summit in November.

She said growth figures alone belied the reality on the ground for women globally, who were often prevented from contributing to economic development because of domestic violence or legal obstacles.

"When you've got growth that is meaningful for a handful of people you are still creating a recipe for social inequality," she told AAP in Canberra.

"There has got to be a deliberate way in which the emphasis of the G20 is linked to tackling this issue of women's economic empowerment." 

Ms Mlambo-Ngcuka was also in Australia drumming up support for gender equality to be given special priority when the UN develops its next list of long-term anti-poverty initiatives.

From next year, world leaders will need to agree on a new set of sustainable development targets and Ms Mlambo-Ngcuka is advocating for a stand-alone goal on women's empowerment. 

She wants Australia on side because of its record promoting gender issues on the world stage and its ability to "push the envelope" on issues it cares about.

"I need Australia to be one of those countries that can bang the table," she said.

"I think this is one of the issues I'm expecting - and I'm seeing - Australia has a possibility to lead the pack." 

She said the rise of fundamentalism in the Middle East and Africa had eroded many gains made over the years for women's peace and security in the world's trouble spots.

The abduction of nearly 300 schoolgirls by Islamic extremists in northern Nigeria represented a backward shift in a country that had once been a champion of women's rights, she said.

"If anyone had told me that in a country like Nigeria you could lose a whole school and you do not have the whole country and government up in arms to find a solution, I would have said no," she said.

https://twitter.com/wecoemp

Improving gender balance generates innovation and brings strong business results, says Mercer.

Pakistani schoolgirls use rods to learn some characteristics of architectural engineering during a school class in Lahore in May. Pakistan is trying to bridge the gender gap highlighted by the Global Gender Gap Report 2013. [Amna Nasir Jamal]

LAHORE – Pakistan, recently named the second-worst country in terms of gender equality, is working to improve its image in terms of women's right and equal opportunity.

Of 136 countries listed, Pakistan ranked second only to Yemen in terms of gender bias issues, according to the Global Gender Gap Report 2013, which was published October 26.

The index focuses on the economic, political, educational and health sectors and provides country rankings that allow for effective comparisons across regions and income groups and over time.

"Women's empowerment is not a sudden phenomenon," Dr. Waqar Masood Khan, federal finance secretary, told Central Asia Online while commenting on the report. "It might take longer for these girls to taste empowerment at home, but the economic prospects created by their hard work ultimately revealed the value of their labour."

Encouragingly, Pakistan ranked 64th when it came to political empowerment of women, having a history that includes a female prime minister, the late Benazir Bhutto.

Improvement of education

One way to boost the country's gender-equality index is through improving education for girls, advocates said.

"Education is the need of the time," Punjab School Education Department Secretary Abdul Jabbar Shaheen said. "No nation can develop without investing in girls' education because they constitute half of the human resources and skills of the country."

While talking about the report specifically, which tagged Pakistan as the eighth worst in terms of equal access to education, he pointed out to recent progress in the field, particularly in Punjab and Sindh.

Lahore has 20,001 boys' schools, 18,040 girls' schools and 1,564 mixed schools, educating more than 2.1m boys and almost 1.8m girls, he said, citing a 2012 Lahore primary school census.

"The local and federal governments are working to provide better education facilities," he said.
"Since 2003, they've provided free textbooks and a monthly Rs. 200 (US $1.86) stipend for girls in classes 6 through 10 in 15 low-literacy districts," he said.

Effective legislation

Pakistan has much to be proud of in terms of women's political power, Sindh Information Minister Sharjeel Memon said, noting its ranking in that arena.

The women's parliamentary caucus, a bipartisan group of woman parliamentarians, is trying to pass legislation that would set aside 10% of seats in parliaments and union councils to female candidates, he added.

A number of laws meant to harness the economic potential of half of the country's population and to improve women's standing in society have taken effect.

They include the Prevention of Anti-Women Practices (Criminal Law Amendment) Bill. It prohibits depriving women of their inheritances and forcing them to marry someone or a copy of the Koran simply to settle a dispute.

The Protection against the Harassment of Women at the Workplace Act 2010, National Commission on the Status of Women Bill 2012 and an amendment to the Criminal Law Act (section 509) all provide additional safety nets for women, Memon added.

More than 9m women have entered the workforce during the last decade, Waqar said. "Young girls from the lower and lower middle classes are exposed to a new world when they come to work," he added.

For the government, the Millennium Development Goals remain a top priority, as do other international commitments on women's empowerment that it is pursuing, he said.

The government is striving to develop the economy, enable Pakistanis to live better lives and foster gender equality, Waqar said, citing the Economic Survey of Pakistan 2012-13.

 By Amna Nasir Jamal

What If the Biggest Obstacle for a Woman is the One in her Mind?

Credit: harrykeely

Women, by many accounts, have all the makings to be on top. More than 70 percent of high school valedictorians in 2012 were women. For decades, more female students than male students have graduated from college. Afterwards, more of them than their male counterparts—some 53 versus 47 percent—claim entry-level management jobs, according to a report by McKinsey Research

But somewhere along the line, the numbers drop for women: to 37 percent for mid-managers, and even lower, to 26 percent, for vice presidents and up. Women head slightly more than 4 percent of Fortune 500 companies. Ten years ago, women held 14 percent of these companies’ board seats; today, it’s 17 percent. A slow burn if ever there was one, that’s for sure. While there’s no longer a question of whether a woman can succeed in “a man’s world”—of course she can, and does—these numbers indicate that either the glass ceiling is thicker and lower than we imagined, or that younger women on the way up are finding a way out.

Or, quite possibly, both.

Unreached female potential is not for lack of desire. In her book Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women’s Changing Lives, Anna Fels writes that starting in childhood both genders have remarkably similar desires for achievement. Both boys and girls dream of accomplishment, recognition, and honor requiring work or skill. They grow up wanting the same things.

“Both boys and girls dream of accomplishment, recognition, and honor requiring work or skill. They grow up wanting the same things.”

Nor is it for lack of confidence. Research, including studies out of Cornell, has long found that women and girls, more than men and boys, tend to underrate their own performance. But that’s changing. A new study conducted by global communications firm Fleishman Hillard and Hearst Magazines, titled Women, Power & Money, found that younger female employees entering the workforce are more likely to perceive themselves as equal to, or better than, men. They see themselves as stronger communicators, and better at recovering from setbacks. 70 percent of Generation Y women in the study described themselves as smart, compared with only 54 percent of men.

We know that there are plenty of obstacles facing women in the workplace: Primitive maternity-leave laws, slow turnover at corporate boards, from which many (men, mostly) don’t retire until the mandatory age of 72. There’s also the fact that although more women are working outside the home, they’re still expected to carry out many of the domestic duties. Although the number of stay-at-home fathers—about 154,000, according to the 2010 Census—is on the rise, women still carry out more of the domestic work, according to a report by Pew Research Center. What’s more, there is an unconscious bias that remains prevalent in many workplaces. After all, women continue to receive less pay for equal work than their male colleagues, and less of other things, too.

Recall the story of transsexual Stanford neuroscientist Ben Barres, who has noted that as a man he is treated with more respect and interrupted less often. Barres recounted how he once overheard a faculty member say, “Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but then his work is much better than his sister’s.” The “sister,” of course, was when Ben was Barbara. Look, too, at the introduction of “blind” orchestra auditions, in which candidates are evaluated from behind a screen. Since implementation, the percentage of women hired by the top five U.S. orchestras has risen from less than 5 percent to 34 percent. It’s hard to expect more when society tells women, over and over, to expect less.

“Persistent bias felt or perceived at any point in a woman’s career can erode her own ambition by causing her to feel less confident about her skills and abilities.
She then strives for less.”

But what if the biggest obstacle is the one that remains in women’s minds? In her much-discussed book, Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg writes that fewer women than men aspire to senior positions, big paychecks, and high-powered careers. They don’t even try. Could women be imparting this “unconscious bias” on themselves? Could bias, in fact, happen not only from the top down but also the inside out? It can. Persistent bias felt or perceived at any point in a woman’s career can erode her own ambition by causing her to feel less confident about her skills and abilities. She then strives for less. She doesn’t get the promotion or the raise not because it’s given to a man, or because she somehow doesn’t measure up, but because she’s voluntarily taken herself out of the running. It’s not confidence or ability that women are lacking, but ambition they’ve lost—or let go of—along the way.

Ambition relies heavily on a belief in one’s own potential, which means that studies like the Fleishman Hillard one show there’s movement afoot. A generation of women coming to the workforce with a strong sense of their own competence bodes well for continuing high aspirations. The good news is that, as Fels writes, ambition isn’t something that, once extinguished, is gone.

by Dr. Peggy Drexler

http://shriverreport.org/what-if-the-biggest-obstacle-for-a-woman-is-the-one-in-her-mind/

Beyoncé's Gender Equality Short Essay

Beyonce is a talented artist, musician, mother and wife but she is also a talented writer as well. The singer wrote a very passionate short essay about gender equality in the USA. (Photo: Instagram/@beyonce)

We need to stop buying into the myth about gender equality. It isn’t a reality yet. Today, women make up half of the U.S. workforce, but the average working woman earns only 77 percent of what the average working man makes. But unless women and men both say this is unacceptable, things will not change. Men have to demand that their wives, daughters, mothers, and sisters earn more—commensurate with their qualifications and not their gender. Equality will be achieved when men and women are granted equal pay and equal respect.

If women received pay equal to their male counterparts, the U.S. economy would produce $447.6 billion in additional income. 

Humanity requires both men and women, and we are equally important and need one another. So why are we viewed as less than equal? These old attitudes are drilled into us from the very beginning. We have to teach our boys the rules of equality and respect, so that as they grow up, gender equality becomes a natural way of life. And we have to teach our girls that they can reach as high as humanly possible.

We have a lot of work to do, but we can get there if we work together. Women are more than 50 percent of the population and more than 50 percent of voters. We must demand that we all receive 100 percent of the opportunities.

By Beyoncé Knowles-Carter

UK 'leading charge' for equality

Prime Minister David Cameron visited the IGas shale drilling plant oil depot near Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, on Monday

Britain will "absolutely lead the charge" to promote equality for women around the world during 2014, Prime Minister David Cameron has said.

Mr Cameron said the UK would use the "moral authority" which it has gained by meeting the United Nations aid target of 0.7% of national income to push for progress on issues ranging from sexual violence to women's property rights and female genital mutilation.

The Prime Minister co-chaired a UN High-Level Panel on development priorities for the years after 2015, which last year named gender equality and the empowerment of women as one of the 12 key goals which the international community should pursue.

The panel's report set out examples of targets which could be adopted by the UN, including the elimination of all forms of violence against girls and women, ending child marriage, ensuring equal rights of women to own and inherit property and halting discrimination against women in political, economic, and public life. 

Speaking to the House of Commons Liaison Committee, Mr Cameron hailed the work of Foreign Secretary William Hague in leading the fight against the use of sexual violence in conflicts and International Development Secretary Justine Greening in tackling female genital mutilation.

Mr Cameron said: "There is a huge opportunity this year for Britain to absolutely lead the charge on women's equality, on women's empowerment, on the empowerment of girls and women worldwide.
"We have got so many things coming together. We have got William Hague's excellent work on preventing sexual violence in conflict. We've got the fact that I co-chaired the High Level Panel, which gave women's empowerment and equality such a high profile.

"We've got what the Development Secretary is doing on female genital mutiliation. We've got the fact that we are carrying forward an enormous commitment on health and on family planning.

"I want to bring all these things together - adding in proper property rights for women worldwide, the right to inherit property, women's entrepreneurship, all of these issues - and use the moral authority that Britain has got in the world from meeting our commitment to the 0.7% aid target to say 'We really want to make huge strides forward right across these issues in the year ahead'.

"I think we've got every opportunity to do that."

Mr Cameron added: "If you look at the appalling things that are done against women and against girls in conflict situations, from Kosovo and Bosnia to the Congo, there has been an unbelievably ghastly and depressing drumbeat of this through the history of the last 20 to 30 years.

"It's full credit to the Foreign Secretary that he has decided to use Britain's diplomatic, military, Foreign Office, aid budget, everything to corral all of this together to raise the profile of the issue but not just to talk about it, to get 138 countries to sign up to a declaration and then to use what we do have - in terms of action as well as words - to send teams of experts into situations like Kosovo, like Bosnia, like the Congo to try and have an effect on the ground."

With British combat troops set to withdraw this year, the Prime Minister told the MPs that progress on women's rights would not be the main measure of success in Afghanistan, but insisted it was an important consideration.

"The test for our presence in Afghanistan overwhelmingly has got to be what the National Security Council set out, which is that when we leave, is Afghanistan capable of maintaining security and preventing the re-emergence of terrorist training camps without the presence of foreign troops?" he said.

"That is the top line of what we are trying to achieve in Afghanistan, that is what we should measure overwhelmingly. Underneath that, I absolutely agree ... the role of women in Afghan society, the number of children going to school, the accessibility of medicine, access to health centres - all of that is important."

The Prime Minister was challenged about the lack of prosecutions for perpetrators of female genital mutilation in the UK.

He said the Crown Prosecution Service was considering six cases.

"This is an absolutely unacceptable practice, it is illegal in the UK, it is illegal for anyone in the UK no matter what their culture, their background or anything else, it is illegal full stop, end of story," he said.

An NSPCC helpline on the issue received 132 contacts, 55 of which were referred to police, he added.

Mr Cameron said the problem was getting victims to come forward and give evidence.

"It's not an acceptable situation, we know this is taking place, we know we have a problem, we have passed a law but we haven't had prosecutions," he said.

"I think we need to keep working at this and understand what more we can do to encourage people to come forward."
© Press Association 2014

Diversity - Empower Women and Recharge the World

 
Muhtar Kent:Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer at The Coca-Cola Company

Our future depends on women. All around the world, women entrepreneurs, women innovators, and women leaders in business, politics, academia, and culture are transforming societies and the global economy. And they will continue to do so. 

Why? For starters, women represent the fastest-growing, most dynamic economic force in the world today. Women now control more than $20 trillion in global spending. That means women have an economic impact 50 percent larger than that of the United States and more than twice the size of China and India’s economies combined.

In the United States alone, women-owned businesses account for nearly $3 trillion of the gross domestic product. In fact, if American women were measured as a separate country, they would have the fifth-largest economy in the world!

Of course, women’s entrepreneurship extends far beyond our shores. The truth is, it’s soaring around the globe. Worldwide, 1 in 11 working-age women is involved in entrepreneurship. And the highest percentages of women business owners are in markets you might not expect. 

In Thailand, nearly 20 percent of working women are entrepreneurs. In India, the number is 14 percent. In Argentina, it’s 12 percent; Brazil, 11 percent; Mexico and Chile, 10 percent. And these numbers continue to increase.

We have also seen that when women rise in their communities, the communities themselves rise to new heights of prosperity and health. Over and over, studies have found a direct correlation between women’s empowerment and GDP growth, business growth, environmental sustainability, improved human health, and other positive impacts. 

So as the world seeks ways to accelerate growth across a global economy that is struggling to emerge from recession, the solution is right in front of us: Empower women, and you recharge the world.
Creating a climate of success for women is smart business—and not just for consumer-products companies. Today, it’s smart business for every company and every country.

In the years ahead, women’s economic participation and entrepreneurial growth will drive the world’s economy. It’s no longer a matter of “if” but of “to what heights.” All of the exciting growth projections for various countries and regions will hinge on greater empowerment of women.

The upward trajectory has already begun. And yet around the world—and across America—we still see too many roadblocks for women: cultural, educational, political, and financial.

Those of us in business, government, and civil society—what we call the “Golden Triangle”—must work together to knock these barriers down. As we do, we will give more women the chance to access financial resources, move into positions of leadership, and start their own businesses.

When it comes to empowering women, the implications for companies, communities, and countries will be vast and profound. Our overall success will, in large measure, depend on the success of women.

If we all do our part, I am convinced that future historians will one day look back on our time as the dawn of “The Women’s Century”—a century that is more open, more hopeful, and more prosperous than any that has come before.
---
I thought I would share with you an essay I was honored to contribute to The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Pushes Back from the Brink, just released by Maria Shriver, the Center for American Progress and RosettaBooks. This important, highly informative eBook is available for free download through January 15. — Muhtar

How Empowering Women in IT Can Spur Economic Development

Tae Yoo

Senior Vice President, Corporate Affairs, Cisco

 

The catalyst of Cisco’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) vision, Tae Yoo leads the company’s social investment programs in education, healthcare, critical human needs, and economic development.

It's a startling pair of statistics: When women are able to earn an income, they typically reinvest 90 percent of it back into their families and communities. And, for every year a girl stays in school, her future earnings will increase exponentially. 

These numbers, from the World Bank and the Council on Foreign Relations, respectively, highlight a simple, common-sense truth: The more time a girl spends in the classroom, the higher the return on investment for her time, and the beneficiaries are stronger families and communities.

Over the past two decades we've seen significant progress made in promoting girls' education around the world. Thanks to ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, among other actions, there is a greater understanding among developed and developing countries that women play a vital role in society and the economy, and that role is significantly enhanced when they are educated. And, the longer a girl stays in school, the greater the impact. The Council on Foreign Relations finds that "one additional year of primary education alone can increase a girl's future wages by 10 to 20 percent, while an extra year of secondary school adds another 15 to 25 percent."

There are still millions of girls and women -- especially in developing countries -- who don't have the information, resources or skills they need to be part of the global economy. Keeping them out of the educational loop -- for social, cultural, or economic reasons -- means that half the population can't contribute to their community's economic growth. 

One of the most compelling arguments for encouraging the education of girls, particularly in developing countries, is this: Education enables jobs, jobs are a source of economic growth, and economic growth is a key to development and stability. 

As educated girls become women, they can transform local communities and act as role models for younger girls. And, according to the World Bank's findings, when women reinvest that 90 percent of their income back into their families and communities, it is most typically spent acquiring "food, health care, home improvement and schooling for themselves and their children."

But, we mustn't only be educating girls in basic literacy. 

We should be preparing them for the jobs of the future, particularly in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) sectors. Over the past decade, new technologies like smart phones, tablet computers and cloud computing have transformed the way we live and interact on a global scale. We can be certain that future technology will continue to play a defining role in all our economic futures. 

In fact, computer networking skills are, according to the industry analyst IDC, "the global currency of 21st century economies," but there is a significant shortage of people equipped with these skills. ICT careers are in high demand everywhere at the moment and are expected to continue to be an important part of global job growth. Jobs in the public sector are increasingly dependent on technology and more and more government services are available online, in developed and developing countries. Women who have ICT skills can help develop and deliver these services, even in places where the sexes are traditionally kept separate. 

Equipping a girl with even rudimentary ICT skills can make a difference in her productivity when she grows up, and this is especially true in developing regions and even in jobs that are viewed as "low-tech." 

For women who produce handicrafts or textiles, for example, knowing how to access the internet can be an efficient way to get to market -- whether selling locally, regionally, or even internationally -- and can offer a pathway to microloans and other banking services, especially in remote areas that may be far from brick-and-mortar financial institutions. 

Similarly, women who are involved in agriculture, which continues to be a major part of rural economies throughout the developing world, can use basic ICT skills to access online resources that help them discover new techniques, anticipate weather conditions, understand crop pricing and so on. Women who have the devices and the technical know-how to access and navigate the internet can learn how to produce larger, healthier crops and will reap the economic benefits in the process.

Since girls and women represent 50 percent of the world population, enabling them to participate in their local economies helps broaden the employment pool. The world needs thinkers, leaders and doers more than ever, so neglecting the minds of half the population means a lost opportunity to benefit from their ideas, contributions and actions. Educating girls and women and equipping them with ICT skills offers a clear return on investment for society: stronger families, stronger communities, stronger economies.

This post is part of a series sponsored by Cisco and its partners promoting women in STEM.