Inspiring women to recognize their own power is crucial for their wellbeing. This is why so many programs strive to empower women.
Providing access to comprehensive healthcare, promoting reproductive rights, and education is critical for empowerment. But so is ensuring that women can earn a living wage, close the gender pay gap, and have input into household decisions.
Social Justice
Social justice is the idea that everyone should be able to live their lives without being held back by things beyond their control, like prejudice and discrimination. This doesn’t guarantee a perfect society, but it does give everyone a fighting chance to achieve their dreams.
Women are often excluded from economic life, and securing their rights to land ownership, education and employment is one way to economically empower them. This can help them develop their potential and increase the overall well-being of their families, communities and economies.
Successful projects can use the empowerment pillars to promote a wide range of activities that will improve women’s lives, including access to economic opportunities, gender-based violence prevention (GBV) and positive social norms change. Ideally, they will pair women’s empowerment objectives with core sectoral objectives. This will result in greater impact than a project that is tethered to a single goal. This will require a multi-partner approach to create sustainable solutions for the long term.
Economic Empowerment
Closing the gender gap in the world of work boosts economies. It helps build more opportunities and strengthens safety nets during economic downturns. It is estimated that women’s full economic participation could add $7 trillion to global GDP by 2030.
Empowering women means giving them the resources they need to participate in markets, control productive assets and earn incomes. It also entails meaningful participation in economic decisions at all levels, from households to international institutions.
Several international commitments support this work, including the Beijing Platform for Action, Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and a series of International Labour Organization conventions. Moreover, there is evidence that economic empowerment supports progress toward gender equality, as well as holistic development. Learn more about how we can help.
Personal Empowerment
Personal empowerment involves a mindset shift that allows you to reclaim your power and take control of your life. It includes a deep understanding of your self-worth and a clear definition of what you value most in life. Having an empowered mindset also helps you recognize and embrace the challenges in life as opportunities for growth.
In the workplace, empowering women is essential for promoting economic growth and equality. A recent report by McKinsey found that achieving gender parity could bolster the global economy by more than PS150 billion. This can be accomplished by implementing policies that promote diversity and inclusion, as well as by providing flexible work arrangements like remote opportunities.
Moreover, the environmental aspect of empowerment involves fostering a sense of community responsibility and encouraging active citizenship. This can be achieved by promoting sustainable practices and educating communities on the impacts of climate change. In addition, it can involve addressing gender inequalities by promoting equality and supporting community-driven initiatives.
Community Empowerment
Women are central to movements for positive social change for their communities and can help shape the future. This can be achieved by empowering them to make decisions about their lives, and by giving them the tools to act on those decisions.
This can include access to information and resources, as well as the ability to advocate for their rights. Women’s empowerment can also be fostered through the promotion of healthy, safe and resilient communities.
Creating community empowerment is a complex and iterative process. The first step is to understand and define the domains of empowerment evaluation. This was done by three different program workgroups at the workshops held in January 2003, 2004 and 2005. The evaluation frameworks were then adapted to the local contexts of each community. The result was an increase in community empowerment over time, but this was not a linear process. This was because the community’s priorities changed over time. This was also due to the time needed to set up networks and initiate external collaboration.