Women & Economy

Q&A: Obesity and Hunger Are Two Sides of the Same Problem

By Joan Erakit
Over 40 million children under the age of five were overweight in 2010. In fact, since 1980, the worldwide prevalence of obesity has doubled, according to the British medical journal the Lancet.

Water Shortage Hits Pacific Women

By Catherine Wilson
The Solomon Islands, a developing island nation in the south-west Pacific Islands, has one of the highest urbanisation rates in the region, and the basic service infrastructure is struggling to cater for the influx of people from the provinces to the capital, Honiara. Thirty-five percent of the city’s population, who live in informal settlements, are facing the health consequences of a dire shortage of clean water and sanitation.

Getting Past Aid to Develop

By A. D. McKenzie
With the level of Western aid to the world’s poorest countries declining amid the global financial crisis, economists are calling for “innovative” means of development that range from proper taxation of multinationals to laws that ensure gender equality.

Women Take the Stage Against Taliban

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
The Taliban may have placed a ban on theatre, but women in Pakistan’s northern provinces won’t allow the threat of the militants’ reprisals to keep them off the stage.

Women Make Flowers Pay

By Catherine Wilson
In Honiara, capital of the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific, women are taking the lead in developing a burgeoning floriculture industry. At the same time, their enterprise is contributing to community resilience as rapid urbanisation exceeds employment opportunities and challenges the economic wellbeing of many urban families.

Women Long to Work in Peace

By K. S. Harikrishnan
Shaken by the brutal gang rape and murder of a young woman in the national capital New Delhi last December, the female workforce in India is calling for more concrete measures for the protection of female employees from both physical and non-physical attacks.

BOOKS: The Legacy of Nafis Sadik, Champion of Choice

By Joan Erakit
Once dubbed "the most powerful woman in the world" by the London Times, Nafis Sadik learned at an early age that persistence leads to opportunities for change - and backlash from the Pope.

Portuguese Women Stand Up for the Family in Times of Crisis

By Mario Queiroz
The huge impact of the economic crisis on male employment in Portugal has led to a sharp increase in the proportion of women who have become the main breadwinners in their families. But that has not translated into progress towards equality.

World Bank 2030 Draft Strategy Criticised for Omitting Inequality

By Carey L. Biron
A leaked copy of a major World Bank strategy paper, outlining a new institutional approach to tackling poverty through 2030, has worried some humanitarian groups and anti-poverty advocates, who say the bank has failed to suggest mechanisms that would allow it to adequately track or deal with growing levels of income inequality around the world.

In Middle East, Women’s Labour Half of Global Levels

By Katelyn Fossett
As countries in the Middle East and North Africa adjust to profound political changes and economic difficulties, development experts on the region have increasingly turned their attention to the social and economic potential of incorporating more female workers into the labour market.

U.S. Urged to Reject New World Bank Focus on Large Infrastructure

By Carey L. Biron
A group of environmentalists, gender activists and international finance watchdogs are calling on the U.S. government to support calls for the World Bank to step back from a new programmatic focus on large-scale infrastructure, which critics say does little to help alleviate poverty.

Equal Chances for Women Critical in ‘Healthy, Productive Society’

By Joan Erakit
In an effort to promote gender equality in workplaces and communities, business leaders, politicians and supporters came together during last week's fifth annual Women's Empowerment Principles Event to explore ways to ensure women are supported in their careers and life choices.

Food Policies Failing the World’s Hungry

By Joe Hitchon
The world’s food security remains “vulnerable”, new data suggests, with some 870 million people experiencing sustained hunger and two billion suffering from micronutrient deficiencies.

Native Women Bring Solar Energy to Chile’s Atacama Desert

By Marianela Jarroud
Three indigenous communities from the Chilean highlands have just received solar panels, which will be set up and maintained by unlikely solar engineers: five native women who travelled halfway around the world to India and overcame language and other barriers to bring photovoltaic energy to their villages.

‘Every Day Is a Fukushima Memorial’

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
Japan prepares to mark the second anniversary of the Mar. 11 triple disaster - an earthquake, tsunami and a critical nuclear reactor accident - with much soul searching across the country.

Women Entrepreneurs Overcoming Barriers in Mexico

By Emilio Godoy
The culture of entrepreneurship is weak among women in Mexico, despite the positive influence that it has on women’s development, in a world where women continue to face greater obstacles than men when it comes to setting up and running a business.

Q&A: “A Pastoralist Woman Is Like a Working Machine”

By Mathieu Vaas
"In some communities, you can’t talk about violence against women," says Agnes Leina, executive director of Il'laramatak Community Concerns (ICC), a group that promotes the human rights of pastoralist communities in northern and southern Kenya, with a special emphasis on women and girls.

Gaza Women Suffer on ‘Their’ Day

By Eva Bartlett
“In Gaza we don't lead normal lives, we just cope, and adapt to our abnormal lives under siege and occupation,” says Dr. Mona El-Farra, a physician and a long-time human rights and women's rights activist in the Gaza Strip. On International Women's Day, when many of the world's women are fighting for workplace equality and an end to domestic violence, Farra and the majority of Gaza's women fight for the most basic of rights.

Guardians of Life and of the Earth

By José Graziano da Silva
Around the world, but especially in the planet’s poorest regions, women represent a life force that renews itself daily, sometimes against all odds.
Rizana Nafeek

24 Nails Dug Into Body, Luckily

By Amantha Perera
Lahandapurege Ariyawathie feels she got off lightly - if returning home with 24 nails embedded in your body is lucky.

No Rest for Weary Massage Workers

By Michelle Tolson
Times are tough in this Southeast Asian nation of 14 million people, where over 30 percent of the population lives below the poverty line of a dollar a day. Formal employment is hard to come by and many workers find themselves drifting in the murky waters of the “informal” market, where wages are unregulated and labour laws are seldom honoured.
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