Women & Economy

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.

Targeting Hard-core Urban Poverty with a Female Face

By Marcela Valente
A new social programme launched by the Argentine government to fight hard-core poverty is providing unemployed mothers who are heads of households with education, training, work and an income.

Technology and Innovation Aim at Greater Food Security

By Cydney Hargis
In the face of global climate change and currency devaluation, improved strategies are being used to combat high international poverty and malnutrition rates, and to increase global food security. 

Management Jobs Elusive for Cuban Women

By Ivet González
Despite the progress made by Cuban women in education, where they account for 64 percent of university graduates, they continue to have a limited presence in management positions.

Community Theatre Confronts Gender Stereotypes

By Kalinga Seneviratne
The play opens with a man and his mother waiting impatiently at the dining table in the family home. A woman rushes in after a busy day at the office with takeaway dinner packets, followed by her son and daughter who walk in expecting their mother to serve them a meal.

Q&A: In Search of “Missing Girls” in TV and Film

By Lydia Lim
Apart from being an actress, film producer and writer, Geena Davis is a leading advocate of equal gender portrayal in the entertainment media.

War or Peace, Sri Lankan Women Struggle to Survive

By Amantha Perera
It has been four years since the guns fell silent in Sri Lanka’s northern Vanni region, after almost three decades of ethnic violence. Unfortunately peace does not mean the end of hardship for the most vulnerable people here: the women.

A Floral Touch to Employment in Kashmir

By Athar Parvaiz
As a little girl, Rubeena Begum had big plans: she would become a doctor and secure a decent income working in one of the 30 hospitals in the Himalayan state of Kashmir in north India.

Girls Fight Back Against Child Marriage

By Naimul Haq
Shirin Aktar was just 13 years old when her parents decided it was time for her to get married.

To Find Peace, And Then Sell It

By Rebecca Murray
As the month of Ramadan nears, shop owners in Sanaa’s old city souk stock up on goods. For men like Ali Al-Fakri, who sells jambiyahs, Yemen’s traditional daggers held in place with richly embroidered belts, the gift-giving holiday marking Ramadan’s end is the busiest time of the year.

Agriculture Leans on Japanese Women

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
Yukako Harada, an energetic 29-year-old, is part of a small but determined band of women farmers working hard to revitalise Japan’s moribund agricultural sector, which is feeling the crunch of an ageing population and a flood of cheap imports.

Q&A: Empower Indigenous Women to Assert Their Rights

By Silvia Romanelli
Women around the world are exposed to domestic violence, sexual and economic exploitation, gender-based violence, female genital mutilation and child marriage. For indigenous women and girls, however, the risk of being victims of such issues is especially high.

Leasehold Forestry Brings a New Lease on Life

By Naresh Newar
Nearly 300 km from Nepal’s teeming capital, Kathmandu, in a small village dug into the steep slopes of the mountainous Palpa district, 35-year-old Dhanmaya Pata goes about her daily chores in much the same way that her ancestors did centuries ago.

Women’s Time Has Come

By Claudia Ciobanu
Closing the gender gap between women and men on agriculture and food security could free over one hundred million people from hunger. 

Award Spotlights Indian Women Helping Women

By Stella Paul
Jassiben, a self-employed potter from Nana Shahpur village in western India, loves summer despite the heat waves and frequent power cuts, because summer days always mean great business.
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