Women & Economy

Kenyan Women Turning the Tables on Traditional Banking and Land Ownership

By Miriam Gathigah
It was less than eight months ago that Mary Auma and her three children, from Ahero in Kenya’s Nyanza region, were living in a one-room house in an informal settlement. Ahero is largely agricultural and each day Auma would go and purchase large quantities of milk and resell it – earning only a 10 percent profit.

Latin American Rural Women Call for Recognition and Policies

By Mariela Jara
Rural women in Latin America play a key role with respect to attaining goals such as sustainable development in the countryside, food security and the reduction of hunger in the region. But they remain invisible and vulnerable and require recognition and public policies to overcome this neglect.

G20 Women’s Summit Pushes for Rural Women’s Rights

By Daniel Gutman
Rural women play a key role in food production, but face discrimination when it comes to access to land or are subjected to child marriage, the so-called affinity group on gender parity within the G20 concluded during a meeting in the Argentine capital.

Entrepreneurial about Gender Equality

By Hong Joo Hahm
Asia and the Pacific needs more women entrepreneurs. Women’s economic empowerment and gender equality depend on it, as does the inclusive economic growth needed to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. This drives a new initiative by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, generously supported by Global Affairs Canada, focused on improving women entrepreneurs’ access to finance in our region.

It’s Not Complicated: UN Must Clarify Immunity

By Paula Donovan
The UN’s youngest entity, UN Women, announced last week that a senior official, Ravi Karkara, had been found guilty of sexual transgressions against an unspecified number of men after a 15-month internal investigation. Newsweek reported that "at least" eight made accusations against him. Karkara’s punishment? Dismissal.

Ethiopian Domestic Workers Battle for Survival in Saudi Arabia

By Rabiya Jaffery
Marjani F, 44, spent 8 years in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital working as domestic help. “My husband was killed by the military after being accused of organizing a protest. I have four children and there was no way I could pay the bills staying there,” she says.

2017 Global Findex: Behind the Numbers on Bangladesh

By Joep Roest
On the face of it, the 2017 Global Findex shows that Bangladesh has made great strides toward financial inclusion since the previous Findex was released in 2014.

The Sun Powers a Women’s Bakery in Brazil’s Semi-arid Northeast

By Mario Osava
“The sun which used to torment us now blesses us," said one of the 19 women who run the Community Bakery of Varzea Comprida dos Oliveiras, a settlement in the rural area of Pombal, a municipality of the state of Paraiba, in Brazil's semi-arid Northeast.

Community Work Among Women Improves Lives in Peru’s Andes Highlands

By Mariela Jara
At more than 3,300 m above sea level, in the department of Cuzco, women are beating infertile soil and frost to grow organic food and revive community work practices that date back to the days of the Inca empire in Peru such as the "ayni" and "minka".

Food Sustainability, Migration, Nutrition and Women

By Enrique Yeves
We worry about how we can continue to put food on our tables; and yet one-third of food is never eaten, instead being lost or wasted.We worry about eating properly, and yet in many countries, poor nutrition, obesity and micronutrient deficiencies are increasingly common. This trend is taking place in the Americas, Oceania, Asia, Africa and in Europe.

Is there Gender Parity & Reverse Sexual Harassment at UN?

By Thalif Deen
Faced with growing allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) in the UN system, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last year announced a “zero-tolerance” policy to fight harassment in the world body.But UN Women, which was created in July 2010 and dedicated to gender empowerment, has moved one step further-- and appointed an Executive Coordinator and Spokesperson on Sexual Harassment and Discrimination, perhaps one of the few UN bodies to do so.

We Have Told G7 Leaders to Make Gender Inequality & Patriarchy History

By Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and Michael Kaufman
For most people, the annual G7 meeting may just seem like an expensive photo-op that doesn’t connect with any concrete change in people’s lives. But for us, appointed by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to sit on his G7 Gender Equality Advisory Council, it was a unique opportunity to push for strong commitments for girls’ and women’s rights.

The Spotlight Initiative: Eliminating Violence & Harmful Practices Against Women & Girls

By Natalia Kanem, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka & Achim Steiner
The numbers are shocking: at least one in three women on the planet has suffered physical or sexual violence, usually at the hands of a family member or intimate partner. More than 700 million women alive today were married as children. Up to 250 million women and girls have undergone female genital mutilation.

‘Don’t Try to Be a Superwoman’: An Interview With Michelle Bachelet

By Dulcie Leimbach
Michelle Bachelet ended her second term as president of Chile on March 11, 2018. Her first term, from 2006 to 2010, was marked by an ambitious social and economic agenda advancing women’s rights and better health care. Her cabinet of ministers, for example, was composed of an equal number of men and women, as she vowed to do during her campaign.

Why Milk, Meat & Eggs Can Make a Big Difference to World’s Most Nutritionally Vulnerable People

By Silvia Alonso
As the world becomes increasingly aware of the growing demands being made of our planet, more and more of us are making lifestyle choices to reduce our negative environmental impact and carbon footprint.

We Need a Gender Shift to save Our Girls from the Jaws of Extremism

By Ambassador Amina Mohamed and Siddharth Chatterjee
Consider this. Boko Haram, the ISIS-affiliated insurgent group has sent 80 women to their deaths in 2017 alone.The majority of suicide bombers used by terror group Boko Haram to kill innocent victims are women and children, US study reveals.

Mothers & Children: Addressing Disappearances through a Gender Perspective

By Rangita de Silva de Alwis
At the beginning of the Nuremberg Trials, Justice Robert Jackson, the Chief Prosecutor, charged the world that submitting the enemy to the judgment of the law is “one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.”

Women Farmers in Peru Bring Healthy Meals to Local Schools

By Mariela Jara
Getting children and adolescents to replace junk food with nutritious local organic foods is the aim of a group of women farmers in a rural area of Piura, on Peru’s north coast, as they struggle to overcome the impact of the El Niño climate phenomenon.

DR Congo’s Mai-Ndombe Forest ‘Savaged’ As Landless Communities Struggle

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
Thousands of logs loaded into makeshift boats at the port of Inongo at Lake Mai-Ndombe stand ready to be transported to Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

UN’s Highest Policy-Making Body to Break Male Domination— Momentarily

By Thalif Deen
The 193-member General Assembly – one of the highest policy-making bodies at the United Nations – will get a much-needed break, come September, when a woman will preside over its 73rd session, only the fourth in the history of the world body.

Indonesia’s Women Activism– Beyond Suffrage

By Devi Asmarani
More than a century has passed since Putri Mardika, Indonesia’s first ever women's organization, was established but challenges persist in the efforts to influence national politics to bring progress to all women.
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