Gender Equality Archives – Page 2 of 4

Equality and Effectiveness: Lessons Learned

About the Authors: Stephenie Foster is a Co-Founder and Partner at Smash Strategies, Yeva Avakyan is Associate Vice President, Gender Equality at Save the Children, and Kristin Kim Bart is Senior Director, Gender Equality, International Rescue Committee. All three are recognized experts in this field.

We recently participated on a panel marking the launch of Save the Children’s Gender Equality Hub. The Hub is a cross-functional team that has been established to oversee the development and implementation of Save the Children’s Gender Equality Strategy through collaborative, cross divisional efforts.

Each of us brought unique expertise on how to promote gender equality and empower women and girls. Collectively, our work spans the government, business, and non-profit sectors. Each sector is different, but we identified overarching lessons learned to increase the effectiveness of this work across sectors.

Why a focus on gender equality? In business and development, we ignore gender equality at our peril. While the term “gender” is often used interchangeably with “women and girls,” the terms are distinct. In short, gender equality is not just about women or girls, but about the different ways women and men experience their lives, have access to resources and take advantage of opportunities. A focus on gender broadens our perspective, so that policies and programs reflect these differential experiences and concentrates work on structural constraints to gender equality. Importantly, this helps us create systems and structures to promote equal opportunity and outcomes for everyone: women and men, boys and girls. It increases organizational effectiveness and helps ensure we use all of the talent available to solve problems and address challenges in a sustainable and durable way.

Here are some key lessons:

We must design, and operate, for change. Words aren’t enough. An organization needs to be purposeful in how it designs a gender strategy and implements it, and use this process to be clear about what success looks like. A gender equality strategy is relevant to both an organization’s internal operating environment and implementation of its outward facing work. It guides an organization’s substantive work to ensure that the differential impact of policies and programs is taken into account. Internal gender teams or working groups can help guide the work so that knowledge is shared within the organization, and the work isn’t siloed. These linkages between organizational and programmatic work ensure better coordination and implementation. Organizationally, gender mainstreaming across functions is important, but can dilute the focus on gender and decrease accountability for real change. It’s critical to ensure that there is a functional group (or person) that only focuses on gender, and helps hold the organization accountable. This helps ensure a sharp focus on gender equality doesn’t get lost along the way.
Organizational leadership is key. Commitment from the top sends a strong signal to others at every level of the organization that paying attention to gender is fundamental to success. But, that’s not enough. Leaders are needed at every level who are committed, and have the resources, financial and otherwise to integrate gender issues into the way the organization functions and to do their jobs. The organization’s leader should refer to gender issues or gender equality in public comments, on social media and during internal meetings throughout the year – not just around International Women’s Day in March. Attention to gender should be integrated into annual (or other) job evaluations so that everyone in the organization is held accountable for implementing a gender policy.
A vision about how a gender focus enhances organizational effectiveness is critical. In addition to a rights-based case for a focus on women and girls — and gender — it’s also important to make a case that focusing on gender translates into more effective policies and programs. In the economic sphere, the data is clear: When women’s participation in the labor force increases, GDP rises. When women start businesses, communities flourish. When women are promoted to senior management and appointed to corporate boards, companies do better. This compelling data is important to highlight and can provide an entry point to skeptics.
Meet people where they are. As a corollary, you will encounter organizational and individual roadblocks and skeptics. It’s important to understand that not everyone prioritizes the issue the way gender experts do. We need to listen to what people say and the concerns they raise, and respond in a way that respects their views. We won’t convince everyone (and there are some who will never be convinced), but it’s critical to make sure we use every opportunity to have this critical conversation and frame it in a way that moves people. Using data and research, and continuing to build the case for why a gendered approach matters using stories, as well as sex-disaggregated data and metrics, helps with these arguments. Sex-disaggregated data is fundamental. It examines differing needs, constraints, and opportunities for women/girls and men/boys. It provides the information to see if interventions are reducing gender disparities in access to, and control over resources, wealth, opportunities, and services, or increasing capability of women and girls to realize their rights and influence decision-making in the public sphere. You won’t know the differential impact of your programs if you don’t segregate the data.
Develop and customize training programs that are practical and help people do their jobs more effectively. Off-the-shelf tools and toolkits aren’t the only answer, but they help practitioners across disparate offices and locations get the start they need. More specialized, hands-on workshops where gender experts help the rest of the staff see how gender can be taken into account in their day-to-day tasks helps make the issue of gender manageable, and something that staff can relate to as they do their work.

Finally, we know it’s important to go beyond gender in recognizing that men or women are not homogenous groups. They have intersecting social identities of race, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, social class, physical ability among others. In doing a gender analysis, taking into account these intersecting inequalities is critical for understanding lived experiences, constraints and needs of different population groups. This is a long game, but worth every step. Making the case everyday — and in every meeting, forum and conversation — matters.

StartUps: Embedding a Focus on Gender From Day One

Businesses ignore women — and a focus on gender — at their peril. Everyone from startup founders to CEOs of Fortune 500 companies needs to promote women’s leadership, create safe and fair workplaces, support and engage women in the community, and ensure that their products and services reflect the differential experiences, and needs, of women and men.

When women’s participation in the labor force increases, GDP rises. When women start businesses, communities flourish. When companies have more gender diversity at the top, they are 21 percent more likely to experience above-average profits.

Startups founded by women are more profitable. According to the Vinetta Project, startups founded by women are 20 percent more likely to be revenue generating and there is a 35 percent higher return on investment (ROI) when financing a company founded by women.

Founding teams that include a woman outperform their all-male peers by 63 percent, according to First Round Capital,comparing performance data in their portfolio over a 10 year period. Women founders create companies targeted at new market niches. Many of the most innovative and promising women-led startups focus on how to manage and ease the time burdens women face. For example, in 2014, Kate Ryder founded Maven Clinic, an online platform connecting consumers with doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals with appointments in real time and a starting price of $18.

I spoke recently on a panel, “Women=Change,” held during DC Startup Week, a festival of programming for founders and entrepreneurs. The standing-room session addressed how focusing on women and gender can increase profitability and sustainability as well as how to concretely build this approach into business planning and development.

Four of my key takeaways:

Good news: investors are looking to invest more in women-led companies. In 2017, only two percent of venture funding went to women-led startups and ventures. That needs to change. But, more funds are investing in companies led by diverse founders. The Helm plans to only invest in women-led companies, and Backstage Capital announced a $36 million fund investing exclusively in companies led by black women founders.
Building a strong ecosystem is essential. Founders and new ventures need what is called an “ecosystem”: a supportive culture, enabling policies and laws, availability of financial and human capital, venture-friendly markets for products, and a range of institutional and infrastructural supports. In order to create such an ecosystem, government, business, financial institutions, investors and mentors must work together. More good news: there are groups bringing together these key actors, such as BEACON DC, a community-led campaign to make Washington, DC the most influential and supportive city for women entrepreneurs in the United States.
Have tough conversations early. If you have issues with people assuming your male co-founder is in charge, or one of your male colleagues takes credit for your ideas, have that uncomfortable conversation early (and often). Discuss this with your co-founder (or employee) to ensure your leadership role is acknowledged. Be clear about who will represent the firm at conferences, and meetings, and how those presentations will be structured.
Simple actions create a more inclusive culture. Rethink your recruitment and selection process. Job descriptions can be unintentionally biased by using phrases that emphasize an aggressive business culture. Use gender neutral titles, check the use of pronouns, and emphasize your commitment to diversity of all kinds. Hire people whose skill sets complement yours. Post jobs in multiple forums. Commit to the slate of candidates you interview being gender-balanced.

If you can embed this approach into your firm’s culture from day one, you are building for growth and sustainability. These actions can take time and thought, but in the end, will save you from playing catch up.

Gender vs. Women’s Empowerment in Development

In many discussions, the term “gender” is often used interchangeably with “women and girls.” These concepts both get at gender norms and roles, but are different. Here’s a overview of these terms and how they differ. In short, we’ve learned that gender equality is are not just about women or girls, but about the different ways women and men experience their lives, have access to resources and can take advantage of opportunities. It broadens our perspective, so that policies and programs take into account those differential experiences of women and men, and address structural constraints to gender equality. Importantly, taking gender into account also encourages programs to include men and boys – political, business and religious leaders as well as husbands, brothers and fathers – because their gender or social roles will also change.

While “sex” refers to the biological characteristics that define us as female or male, “gender” refers to the economic, political, and cultural attributes and opportunities associated with being male or female. How gender is defined varies among cultures and changes over time.

Gender equality is the concept that all human beings, both men and women, are free to develop their personal talents and abilities and make life choices without the limitations set by stereotypes, rigid gender roles, or prejudices. It does not mean that women and men are the same, but that their rights, responsibilities, and opportunities should not depend on whether they are born male or female.

The role of women and the idea of “gender equality” in development has changed over time. For a very long time, development programs did not take sex or gender into account. Commodities or services, such as food, healthcare or education, were provided by richer countries to developing ones without attention paid to the characteristics of the beneficiaries.

A few decades ago, discussions and program implementers began to take into account that women might have different needs than men and/or might prioritize assistance in a different way. An example — for a long time rice was distributed around the world in 50 lb bags. While most men could haul the bags onto their backs and carry them home, the weight made collection of this food almost impossible for women. A simple change, made at women’s request, made the bags of rice lighter so that women could transport them.

Next, development organizations began to consider how men and women benefited from their programs. For instance, asking if both boys and girls were able to attend school, and what the barriers might be if there weren’t equal attendance rates. Or, if an agriculture program was teaching how to improve crop yields, were both male and female farmers benefiting from that knowledge. If all of the intended beneficiaries were not being reached or the outcomes were not being reached as planned, implementers started asking questions.

In the last ten years, technical experts have moved from a focus on women to gender. What was acknowledged was that in order to “empower” women, their social or gender roles had to change. For example, if the aim of a program is to create more women business owners in order to increase her family’s income and move them out of poverty, then the program cannot focus solely on the female entrepreneurs-to-be. Training women about how to start and run a business is key, no doubt, but the program must also take into account the local laws that prevent women from having access to credit, and, very importantly, how her income will create a new balance of power within her home. We now know that when a woman, a wife, earns her own income it can change the gender roles of both the woman and her husband. If a women begins contributing to family income (when she didn’t before), this can make her husband feel shame that he cannot solely support his family and lead to an increase in violence against her. And the same is true when women learn more about how their bodies function, play a greater role in politics or even stay in school a few more years.

The United States government, particularly the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), has kept abreast of this growing field of gender and development just as it has with other technical fields, gaining new knowledge and improving its programs to spend U.S. taxpayer dollars more efficiently as it ends extreme poverty. USAID collaborates with other governments, private companies and implementing partners to know more and do better for women around the world.

While the gap between the number of boys and girls in primary school has been eliminated, the number of women in elected office has increased and the number of women in the formal workforce is higher than it has ever been, now is a good time to remind ourselves about the importance of these issues, how we arrived at this moment and the need to continue this critical work.

Ensuring Women’s Participation in Upcoming Afghan Elections

Afghanistan has two elections scheduled in the next six months: Parliamentary and district council elections on October 20, 2018 and the Presidential election on April 20, 2019. These elections, the first in almost five years, will be watched closely by Afghans and the international community. Women must have every opportunity to participate fully in every phase of the electoral process: as candidates, election administrators, observers, and voters.

In order to ensure high levels of participation and engagement, Afghan women must be at the table as election planning occurs. The Afghan government, international donors, and Afghan civil society must ensure that they weave women’s perspectives and input into the strategies and tactics they are using to drive maximum participation. Electoral and governmental authorities must take concrete steps to ensure that women and men are equal participants in the Afghan political process, and must address electoral-related violence. This is essential to the credibility and transparency of the electoral process and is especially important as the Taliban is asserting itself across the country and apparently engaged in negotiations with U.S. officials.

Women in Afghanistan have made substantial progress since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, but that progress is tenuous. Women have demonstrated their commitment to public life: in the 2014 presidential run-off, 2.4 million Afghan women voted (38 percent of all voters), the highest number in Afghanistan’s history. According to the Asia Foundation, over 78,000 women have been appointed to government positions since 2001. Currently, women hold twenty-eight percent of Parliamentary seats, several cabinet positions, and numerous judicial positions. However, Afghanistan remains an insecure and dangerous environment, which is difficult for all Afghans, but particularly for women and girls.

Across the globe, violence against women in the electoral process is a threat to electoral integrity. It affects women’s ability and interest in participation at every level of the political process. Women can be targeted because of their political affiliations, or because they are active in politics and public life, or exercising their right to vote, still often seen as places for men.

In past Afghan elections, there have been substantial reports of violence, and threats of violence, targeted at women voters and candidates. There have been continual challenges finding enough women willing to work at polling stations, as well as a lack of women “body searchers,” to ensure that individuals entering women’s polling places are indeed women and not armed. There have been numerous efforts to address these issues: from electoral hotlines to extra security for women candidates to decreased fees for women seeking to run. But, these issues remain prevalent as Afghanistan enters this upcoming set of elections.

What can be done?: The Afghan Independent Election Commission (IEC) must focus on recruiting women for positions throughout the electoral administration system — from headquarters to polling centers and local electoral bodies — and for both permanent and temporary positions. At the same time, registration and polling centers must be accessible, safe and secure to ensure the full participation of women voters. Voter registration processes must reach women throughout the country and ensure that the act of registering or voting does not put them in harm’s way. The IEC and other relevant government entities must ensure there is sufficient security staff at women’s polling centers. Women candidates, throughout the country, must feel safe as they campaign. Finally, international and domestic electoral observation missions deployed across Afghanistan must be gender-balanced to ensure that they are able to fully report on the elections and reflect the different experiences of men and women in the process. Finally, there must also be a way to capture the lessons learned from the October elections and use them in the lead-up to those in April.

As internet access and the use of social media (mostly Facebook) increases in Afghanistan, there must be special attention paid to how social media is being used to shame and threaten women who are activists and candidates, and to share false information. The Afghan government and the international community must take steps to address election-related violence which deters women from voting, working at polling stations, campaigning for office, and serving as elected officials.

Protecting the hard-won gains that women have made since 2001 is critical. This is also an opportunity to reaffirm support for women’s participation and take concrete steps to increase women’s ability to fully participate in these elections. The Afghan government, the international community, Afghan civil society, and Afghan citizens all have a role to play.

SDG Five, Target Four

Within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), or Global Goals, Goal 5 is to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. For Goal 5, there are nine targets. In this blog post, we will focus on SDG5 Target 4, which focuses on the value of unpaid care and domestic work and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family.

The prevalence and invisibility of unpaid care work in the U.S. and abroad makes acknowledging and tracking data critical to developing policy solutions. UN Women’s “Progress of the World’s Women Report” acknowledges that “Domestic work makes all other work possible”—and this is true regardless of whether that work comes from domestic workers or unpaid family caregivers. The labor of domestic workers is critical to the function and growth of national and global economies.” (Source)

Unpaid care and domestic work are barriers to reaching gender equality as they reinforce discriminatory gender stereotypes that force women to stay in the home and limits participation in the public sphere, (Source) and contributes to the persistent gender gaps in labor force participation, activity rates, and wages. In terms of numbers, women comprise the majority of domestic workers, accounting for 80 percent of all workers in the sector globally; which means that approximately 55 million women participate in domestic work. (Source) There are at least two million domestic workers in the United States, and most of them are African American or immigrant women.

Around the world, women spend two to ten times more time on unpaid care work than men. (Source) According to a 2014 OECD study, women and men in the United States also spend their time differently. While men spent an average of 19 minutes per day caring for a family member, women spent 41 minutes. While men spent an average of 82 minutes per day doing “routine housework”, women spent 126 minutes. (Source)

One way to recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work is by creating more public services that can take care of the family care and household duties that are now disproportionately done by women. The United States remains the only country in the developed world that does not mandate employers offer paid leave for new mothers, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Twenty-five years ago President Bill Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act, which included a provision giving eligible workers 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a new child. (Source) Because of the lack of support at the federal level, states and the private sector are now starting to address the issue. As of May 2018, twenty-one states had pending legislation for paid leave laws, in addition to the five states and District of Columbia that have paid family leave laws already. (Source)

Further, the U.S. Government also does not provide for child care, and quality child care is often very expensive. In a 2016 report, the cost of infant child care in 49 states plus the District of Columbia exceeded seven percent of the state median income for a two-parent family. (Source) Daycare is also often hard to find. A report from the Center for American Progress (CAP), found that 51 percent of the population in 22 states resides in “childcare deserts.” In those neighborhoods, the number of children under age five outnumber available daycare slots more than three to one. (Source)

Another way to reach this target of Goal 5 is through the provision of infrastructure and social protection and the prevention of abuse of those who work in the care sector. Of the 67 million domestic workers worldwide, 60 million are excluded from social security coverage. In the U.S., while the infrastructure for domestic work, such as access to clean water and availability of household appliances, generally exists, laws protecting domestic workers are often not enforced, or domestic workers are excluded from certain legal protections. (Source) As a result, beginning with New York in 2010, eight U.S. states (Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Nevada, Oregon and California and New York) have passed Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights, which protect workers from racial discrimination and sexual harassment, provides for one day off a week, and overtime and paid leave. Other states have yet to catch up. (Source)

Finally, in order to reach this SDG target, governments can actively promote shared responsibility for care and domestic work. From what I can find, the U.S. government has never had a campaign to increase the burden sharing for unpaid care and domestic responsibilities. There was a three- year “Make it Work” campaign centered around the 2016 U.S. elections that asked candidates to focus on child care, pre-Kindergarten and elder care; pay transparency and the fight for a higher, national minimum wage; as well as paid family and medical leave, earned sick days, fair scheduling, and workplace fairness for pregnant women. Family Values@Work is a network of coalitions in 21 states working to pass policies that value families at work such as paid sick days and affordable family leave. These policies are not only good for individual women and families, but provide support on a policy level for a more equitable division of labor and family responsibility.

More Women in AI = More Inclusive Tech

Every day and in every way, we depend on technology. It helps us access information and each other, and organize our business and personal lives. But, there are increasing concerns about technology: how it impacts privacy; how the designers of tech tools (spoiler alert: mostly white men) embed gender and other norms in what they design; and, how technology perpetuates offensive and dangerous offline behavior.

Certainly, there is differential access to the internet. Women globally have less access than men, and even in the U.S., where overall internet access rates are fairly equal, women with fewer resources were 50 percent less likely than men to be online, and 30–50 percent less likely to use the internet for economic and political empowerment.

Technology is a powerful connector. It is imperative that women and girls can use technology to fully access education and financial services, grow their businesses, and communicate with family and friends. At the same time, it is critical that technology reflects the lives of women and girls, and does not replicate offline harassment and gender-based violence.

In order to do that, we must increase the number of women — across the globe — who design technology. Women like these. Most artificial intelligence (AI), and the programs that utilize AI, are created by (white) men. Those programs and apps will be different than those created by a more diverse group. For example, a recent article documented that “smart speakers” like Alexa and Home have a hard time understanding commands by those who speak English with an accent.

Jobs designing technology must be filled by a broad range of people. Effective problem solving occurs when people with diverse voices, viewpoints and life experiences are involved. Research published by the Harvard Business Reviewsupports this approach, finding that diversity, both inherent and acquired, helps drive innovation.

Yet barriers limit the kinds of people who enter and remain in these fields; women, especially, are often left out of the talent pool. A report by the American Association of University Women found that, in the U.S., 80 percent of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) jobs are in engineering and computer science, but women comprise only 12 percent of the engineering and 26 percent of the computing workforce.

How can we make progress? Here are three steps:

Be purposeful in efforts to attract women: In the U.S., women earn about 20 percent of engineering degrees and 16 percent of computer science degrees. Key universities are increasing these numbers. According to a 2015 federal study, women earned over 40 percent of engineering degrees at schools like Franklin Olin, MIT, Yale, Howard, George Washington, Harvey Mudd, Brown, and Southern Methodist University. At Harvey Mudd, the percentage of women graduating with degrees in computer science increased from 12 percent to approximately 40 percent in five years. The school revised its introductory computing course and split it into two levels divided by experience, provided research opportunities for undergraduates after freshman year, and exposed young women students to the field by attending the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference.
If you can see it, you can be it: Across the globe, STEM camps bring young women together to learn and to encourage interest in STEM careers. In the U.S., young women engineers have started a social media campaign #ilooklikeanengineer to change gender stereotypes about what an engineer should look like. Helping women succeed in STEM jobs is equally important. The U.S. State Department’s TechWomen program supports women from over 20 countries, and pairs them with an American mentor at companies across Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Promote STEM’s role in problem solving: When schools promote the impact that STEM jobs can have on solving problems, women are more attracted to those fields of study. Technology is more than a gadget; it’s a tool to solve pressing issues. To this end, Google Cloud’s Dr. Fei-Fei Li co-founded AI4All, an organization to cultivate diversity in the AI field through education, mentorship, and early exposure to its potential for social good.

Collectively, technology needs to help all of us. Taking these steps gets us closer to that goal.

African Women: Leaders in the Economy and Society

Expanding markets. Ensuring quality control. Accessing supply and value chains. Broadening networks. Addressing management challenges. Showcasing women’s leadership. And yes, advocating for change.

These are topics that a dynamic group of African women entrepreneurs are focusing on during their visit to the U.S. as part of the African Women’s Entrepreneurship Program (AWEP). AWEP was launched, in conjunction with the 2010 African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) Forum, as part of the U.S. Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP). Every year, U.S. Embassies in Sub-Saharan Africa nominate leading women entrepreneurs to participate.

I worked with this group as they crystalized their professional and personal goals for the IVLP and made concrete plans to use new contacts and skills when they return home. We discussed the challenges they face as business leaders and women and the centrality of developing strong leadership and communication skills. The group brainstormed about how to address their challenges as leaders, managers, and innovators; how to successfully confront gender norms and policies that can hold back women’s economic success; and how to effectively exercise authority.While in the U.S., the group is meeting with government and business leaders as well as entrepreneurship experts. Their meetings address topics such as U.S. business practices and African access to U.S. markets, integrating African women into the global economy, and funding access for commercial expansion in Africa. These women are leading actors in economic growth and social advocacy in their communities and countries. AWEP’s alumnae have created thousands of jobs and established more than 20 women’s business associations across the Sub-Saharan region.

These women and countless others across the globe are central to creating jobs and economic growth. Research by McKinsey Global Institute shows that if women participated in the labor force at the same rate as men globally, GDP could increase from $12 to $28 trillion by 2025. This is an 11-26 percent increase, which at the highest level is roughly equal to the combined GDP of the U.S. and China, the world’s two largest economies. In Sub-Saharan Africa, GDP would increase by 12 percent. Supporting women is not only important for these women and their communities and countries, but for all of us.

Here are some of my takeaways based on my conversations with this year’s AWEP participants:

Networks make a difference. Bringing women together creates strong networks and helps people learn from each other’s successes and mistakes. On visitor programs, participants meet and interact with many U.S. experts. But just as importantly, they meet and bond with each other, make connections based on shared experiences, and create lasting support systems. The AWEP group identified strengthening networks as key for two reasons: first, it helps each individual make connections and second, it provides a platform to share knowledge with others.

Documenting successes and leading by example are important. As the group noted, both quantitative data and qualitative documentation make the case for women’s economic impact. Research data is foundational and can win over those who are skeptical about the impact of women on the economy. And telling the stories of successful women-led businesses and their economic impact grabs and holds attention. These stories of women’s contribution to job creation and prosperity can inspire other women and help build support among policymakers. Additionally, harnessing interest in women’s economic empowerment can start conversations about how communities flourish when women are fully engaged and how to address other issues that hold women and girls back.

Governments and businesses are key partners to accelerating women’s economic participation. Entrepreneurs are innovators and bring their skills and talents to product development, but they need partners in government and business. For example, women have a harder time than men accessing finances. Governments can address many of the issues that create barriers, such as laws that make it hard for women to borrow money, and banks can support creative ways for women to handle funds, including mobile banking technology that would allow women at marketplaces to make deposits on the spot. Everyone must be part of the solution.

The bottoms line is that these business leaders are fully engaged, creative, and looking to make collective and individual impacts. Their efforts change lives and communities every day. Supporting them is a privilege.

Women. Drive. Economic. Growth. Period.

When women’s participation in the labor force increases, GDP rises. When women start businesses, communities flourish. When women are promoted to senior management and appointed to corporate boards, companies do better. We ignore this compelling data at our peril.

Business leaders, advocates and policy makers committed to economic growth and prosperity must use every strategy and tool to open doors and opportunity for women to participate in today’s global economy.

In early May, I moderated the opening plenary of the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society in Toronto, which convened 600 influential business, institutional and political global leaders to strategize about breaking down entrenched barriers to women’s participation and developing concrete

solutions. The Forum focused specifically on influencing the agenda of the G7, a powerful group comprising the U.S., Japan, Germany, the U.K., France, Italy and Canada, as well as the European Union. This discussion was particularly timely as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made empowering women one of the main themes of Canada’s 2018 G7 presidency.

The plenary examined how governments, the private sector and multilateral forums like the G7, can take action to accelerate women’s economic opportunity, and in the process, create more jobs, increase innovation, and transform societies. It highlighted the importance of enabling environments and corporate culture, the role of technology, and the importance of measuring impact. I was joined on the panel by four dynamic women leaders from the private, public and NGO sectors.

Here are my key takeaways.

First, most private sector leaders today recognize the competitive advantage of women’s economic participation, whether in the corporate c-suite, in non-traditional jobs, or as entrepreneurs. But, talk isn’t enough. Companies that make their commitment real have been able to attract, and importantly, retain women employees by challenging assumptions, promoting work/life balance, and creating an environment where everyone is valued. For example, Salesforce took an honest look at how women and men were being paid, and increased salaries when it found discrepancies. But these actions aren’t only important to women. Today, both men and women are seeking jobs and starting businesses that value their contributions, are flexible, and give them a sense of ownership.

Second, strong enabling and legal environments are critical. To succeed, women need skills, networks, and access to capital and markets. At the same time, women also need access to quality education, child care, clean water, health care and a sense of personal security. This includes legal frameworks that ensure non-discrimination, and protections against sexual harassment, assault and violence. There is good news. According to the most recent World Bank Women, Business and the Law Report, over the last two years, governments in 65 countries took concrete steps to improve women’s economic inclusion. However, women still face legal barriers in over 100 countries, and those barriers adversely affect their economic choices.

Third, technology is both a tool and a challenge. Technology is driving change and innovation across the globe, and has a tremendous impact on economic competitiveness. As we embrace technology, however, we need to be mindful that globally, there is a gender gap in online access. In urban poor areas, women are 50 percent less likely than men to be online, and 30–50 percent less likely to use the internet for economic or political empowerment. A 2015 report, Connected Women, found that women are 14 percent less likely than men to own a mobile phone. And, when women own phones, they use them differently than men do.

Finally, measurement matters and helps tell the story. We know that making the business case is important, and macro-level data, like that contained in the studies cited in this article, makes a difference at the policy level. We also need to look closely at what works on the individual and business level. Measuring success is about understanding how many women graduate from a vocational program, and also how that translates into impact and value.

Under the Canadian presidency, the G7 is deepening its focus on these critical issues. As advocates, policy makers and business leaders, we can help by continuing to gather data about how women are central to economic growth. Interventions must ensure women are treated equally and fairly, and have access to the tools they need to succeed, wherever they are on the path of economic participation and leadership.

Kuwaiti Women: Forging Forward in Public Life

Kuwaiti women: quick, what image comes to mind?

Truthfully, it’s a mixed picture. According to the 2017 Global Gender Gap Report, Kuwait ranks 129, of 144 countries, on gender parity overall. Having said that, however, 50 percent of Kuwaiti women are in the labor force. They have higher levels of educational enrollment than Kuwaiti men, have access to financial services and bank accounts, although at lower rates than men. They marry in their 20’s, have their first child at 30, and on average live the same number of years as Kuwaiti men.

One area where Kuwaiti women are not represented is in elected office. Having won the right to vote in 2005, Kuwaiti women voted for the first time in 2006. Four women won seats in the Kuwait Parliament in 2009 (out of 65 members), but currently, there is only one women serving in the Parliament.

In April, I worked with a group of exceptional Kuwaiti women interested in expanding their participation in public life, whether that means running for political office, supporting other women’s campaigns, leading in civil society and business, or working to address legal issues that impact women’s ability to fully participate in society, such as gender-based violence.

They were in the U.S. for two weeks, and visited Washington, DC, Annapolis, Maryland, and Dearborn, Michigan. They met with leaders from a cross section of institutions and communities: the federal government, Congress; state and local government; the judiciary; non-governmental organizations; experts in political leadership and campaigns; and academics. They met men and women, Arab Americans and not, elected and appointed officials, and those seeking political office. They got to see American political fundraising upfront and personal by attending a large DC gala dinner, supporting women candidates in the upcoming election cycle.

Of course, the reason behind such a visit is exposure to American people, places and viewpoints. These experiences gave these women a sense of what has worked here and why and what hasn’t, so they can think about what might work in their context when they return home and strategize about their way forward. As always, it is interesting to me to see our institutions and our democracy through their eyes.

They grappled with existential issues, such as what it means to be an Arab American, and the tension between assimilation and integration. Meeting with young elected officials, they were taken by how those officials balanced their own values and views with respect for others in their family and community who may not hold the same views.

SDG Five, Target Three

Within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), or Global Goals, Goal 5 is to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. For Goal 5, there are nine targets. In this, we will focus on SDG5 Target 3: Eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation.

Unfortunately, data on these critical issues is not regularly collected in the United States. While we believe that less than 5 percent of girls in the United States are married before the age of 16 and that female genital mutilation is rare or limited to ethnic minority enclaves, we do not know for sure.

Early, Forced and Child Marriage: At the federal level, there is no law against child, early and forced marriage because laws on the age of marriage in the United States are set at the state level. Twenty-seven states have no minimum age for marriage; four states allow girls as young as 13 or 14 years old to marry; and in many states, 16 and 17 year olds can marry with parental consent alone. According to data compiled by Unchained At Last, at least 207,468 minors married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2015. This likely does not reflect the breadth of the issue because ten states provided no or incomplete statistics. A few other nuances:

Eight-seven percent of the minors who married across the country between 2000 and 2015 were girls, with the majority aged either 16 or 17.
More than 1,000 children aged 14 or under were granted marriage licences. (Source)

There have been some advocacy campaigns to set or increase the age of marriage at the state level to match the age of consent for sex. However, in 2017, the Governor of New Jersey rejected legislation that would have banned marriage before age 18, without exceptions. “An exclusion without exceptions would violate the cultures and traditions of some communities in New Jersey based on religious traditions,” the Republican governor wrote. (Source)

Globally, one third of girls in the developing world are married before the age of 18 and one in nine are married before the age of 15. In 2012, 70 million women aged 20-24 had been married before the age of 18. If present trends continue, in the next ten years, 150 million girls will be married before their 18th birthday. While countries with the highest prevalence of child marriage are concentrated in Western and Sub-Saharan Africa, due to population size, the largest number of child brides reside in South Asia. (Source)

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM): A federal law making it illegal to perform FGM was passed in 1996, and was amended in 2013 to make it illegal to knowingly transport a girl out of the U.S. to inflict FGM abroad. Since 1990, the estimated number of girls and women in the U.S. who have undergone or are at risk of the practice has more than tripled. This increase is due to rapid growth in the number of immigrants from countries where FGM is a common practice. These girls and women are concentrated in California, New York and Minnesota. Though at-risk girls and women are thought to live in every state but Hawaii, only 25 states have enacted laws against FGM. Prosecution under these laws depends on the age of the victim; who performed the procedure; whether the victim was taken out of the country for FGM; and, whether the accused uses cultural reasons as a defense. Punishments include as much as 30 years in prison and fines that reach $250,000. The first prosecution in the U.S. did not occur until 2017 when two Michigan doctors and the wife of one of the doctors were charged with performing the banned procedure on two 7-year-old girls. (Source) There has been some discussion about more formal data collection about the incidence of FGM in the U.S. with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

Globally, an estimated 200 million girls and women alive today have undergone FGM in the countries where the practice is concentrated. Furthermore, there are an estimated 3 million girls at risk of undergoing female genital mutilation every year. The practice has been documented in 30 countries, mainly in Africa, as well as in the Middle East and Asia. Some forms of FGM have also been reported in other countries, including among certain ethnic groups in South America. (Source)

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