Women & Economy

Women Advance in Distant Islands

By Catherine Wilson
Women’s political representation in the Pacific Islands region is globally the lowest at 3.65 percent, compared to the world average of 18 percent. Leadership is still widely perceived as ‘men’s business’ and voting is heavily influenced by nepotism and money politics. However, Rhoda Sikilabu, minister for community affairs in Isabel Province in the Solomon Islands is demonstrating that women leaders can drive development progress and win voter support.

Ethiopia Swamped by Tidal Wave of Returned Migrants

By Ed McKenna
The return of 120,000 young undocumented migrant workers from Saudi Arabia to Ethiopia has sparked fears that the influx will worsen the country’s high youth unemployment and put pressure on access to increasingly scarce land.

Wage Hike in Haiti Doesn’t Address Factory Abuses

By Jane Regan
Haiti’s minimum wage will nudge up 12 percent on Jan. 1, from 4.65 to 5.23 dollars (or 200 to 225 gourdes) per day. Calculated hourly, it will go from 58 to 65 cents, before taxes.

Saving Children From Loggers

By Catherine Wilson
Logging is the largest industry in the Solomon Islands, an archipelago located northwest of Fiji, where 80 percent of the islands are covered in tropical rainforest. But, although timber accounts for 60 percent of this South Pacific nation’s export earnings, most local communities have experienced no beneficial development.

Uganda’s First Female Funeral Director – From Taboo to Mainstream

By Amy Fallon
Uganda may have the third-highest fertility rate in the world but where there is life, death is inevitable. And it is a certainty that Regina Mukiibi Mugongo made the most of when she became this East African nation’s first ever funeral director almost two decades ago.

Widening Inequality Shatters Mirage of Social Mobility

By Ramy Srour
Growing income inequality will pose a major threat to social stability in countries around the globe, according to a new report by the World Economic Forum.

Bank Crash Hits Women Harder

By Lowana Veal
Women in Iceland have been more badly affected by the economic collapse in 2008 than their male counterparts, both in terms of physical and mental health, studies show.

Middle East Women Mean Business

By Rachel Williamson
Evidence is mounting to suggest women entrepreneurs are more common in the Middle East than in startup capital Silicon Valley, and some even say it’s a more supportive place for them to start a business.

Women Find a Green Midas Touch

By Naimul Haq
On a hot and humid day in northwestern Bangladesh, Anisa Begum sits with a group of 25 homemakers, explaining how to use natural fertilisers to increase grain yield.

For Kurdish Women, It’s a Double Revolution

By Karlos Zurutuza
"I got married when I was 14 and I already had four children at 20," recalls Nafia Brahim. In her fifties now, she is working hard so that no other woman loses control of her life.

Bangladesh Workers Short of Compensation

By Robert Stefanicki
Six months after the worst man-made disaster in Bangladesh’s history, safety conditions in garment factories have a chance to improve. But not the lives of survivors or the victims' next of kin.

Teen Pregnancy Rooted in Powerlessness

By Joan Erakit
Before we begin, perhaps we can set aside the stereotypes: no, she didn’t "mess herself up by following boys around", and no, it is not in fact her fault that she became pregnant.

Too Many Indians Find It’s Better to Die

By K. S. Harikrishnan
When Sarath, 29, a security staffer with a private firm in Kattakada town in India’s southern Kerala state hanged himself at his office premises, his death became a grim reminder of what statistics in the country have been showing for some time now: more and more young Indian men are succumbing to socio-economic pressures and are committing suicide.

Domestics Join Forces to Put Their House in Order

By Inés Acosta
“We have come together to join forces, to be heard, because we want to speak for ourselves,” said Ernestina Ochoa, a Peruvian domestic worker, at the close of the founding congress of the International Domestic Workers Federation in the Uruguayan capital.

Mirror, Mirror – Who Is that Woman on TV?

By Walter García and Fabiana Frayssinet
Carla Vilas Boas is of mixed-race descent – African, European and indigenous - like a majority of the population of Brazil. But she spends hours straightening her hair, trying to look more like the blond, blue-eyed women she sees in the mirror of television.

Climate Change a Mixed Blessing for Coconut Farmers

By Desmond Brown
Climbing up the coconut industry has been anything but easy for Rosamund Benn, who has dedicated the past 32 years of her life working on a 50-acre coconut farm in The Pomeroon, a farming region of Guyana.

Survivors Question U.N. Focus on Legalising Sex Work

By Lucy Westcott
The age-old debate over how to regulate sex work has led to a rift between the United Nations and anti-trafficking organisations, which are pressuring the world body to rethink its position following two reports that advocate decriminalising all aspects of prostitution.

Mideast and Africa Still Holdouts on Women’s Rights

By Ramy Srour
Gender equality around the world has increased dramatically over the past half-century even though the vast majority of countries continue to restrict women’s economic development in at least one way, the World Bank reports this week.

OP-ED: Sustainable Development Goals After 2015

By Olivier De Schutter, Jochen Flasbarth, and Dr. Hans R. Herren
Reducing the proportion of undernourished people by half until 2015 was one of the Millennium Development Goals that the international community set in 2000. It will not be reached: At least 870 million people worldwide – and one child in five – still go hungry; this in a world where we already produce enough food today to feed nine billion people in 2050.

Domestic Workers Emerge from the Shadows

By Carey L. Biron
An international convention enters into effect on Thursday that could eventually extend labour rights to as many as 100 million domestic workers across the globe, a constituency that has historically been bypassed by national laws.

Building the Future Enterprise by Enterprise in Rural Peru

By Milagros Salazar
Women and young people are central players in dozens of small businesses and environmental protection plans that are changing the lives of poor rural families in the Andes highlands of southern Peru.
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