Monday, December 7, 2015

Women empowerment and initiatives in Brazil

Economic opportunities are one factor that help women to empower themselves. There are many different types of programs that aim to empower women economically. Institutions may invest in different areas, such as, entrepreneurship, employment, farming, youth empowerment, and more. The Roadmap for promoting women’s economic empowerment assists in evaluating program and policy action for women's economic empowerment. Roadmaps such as these are useful for understanding how empowerment programs have been effective.
Programs, such as 10,000 Women: Business Growth through Capital help women to achieve their empowerment through entrepreneurship. The project was designed by Goldman Sachs and aims to extend the business training to 10,000 women around the world. It provides women with knowledge in business management and development of managerial skills. Different institutions around the world are helping Goldman Sachs to put the program into practice. In Brazil, Fundação Dom Cabral is the third part provider. Fundação Dom Cabral is a business school that helps individuals develop skills and abilities in order to have their businesses grow and prosper. In the country, over the last five years 800 women from 84 municipalities of Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro were trained in management, by the professors at Fundação Dom Cabral. The youtube video below has more information about the program 10,000 Women: Business Growth through Capital:

As Chant (2012) argue, gender equality is characterized as smart economics, which enables women to contribute their utmost skills and energies to a project for world economic development. Therefore, world economic development receives impulses from programs such as these. As Chant (2012) explains, investing in women speeds economic development by raising productivity and promoting the more efficient use of resources. Social returns are produced with women in the economy, such as, improving child survival and reducing fertility, and intergenerational pay-offs. Equality in access to opportunities, rights and voice can lead to more efficient economic functioning and better institutions, with dynamic benefits for investment and growth (Chant, 2012).
                In Brazil, institutions and organizations are making attempts to start conversations about gender and women empowerment. For example, the consulting firm 65/10 created a trend report with the objective of improving inequality of gender though entrepreneurship and making more people conscious of how living life as a woman and a man can be different. The initiative is called The revolution is hers (A revolução é delas - 65/10, 2015). Starting these conversations is one of the first steps to getting women and men conscious of their biases so that they can change and create a more inclusive environment for women.

References:
65/10. A revolução é delas. 2015. Available on:  http://revolucaodelas.meiacincodez.com.br/
Chant, Sylvia. 2012. “Fixing women or fixing the world? ‘Smart economics’, efficiency approaches, and gender equality in development.” Gender and Development 20(3): 517-529.

Fundação Dom Cabral. 2015. Available on: https://www.fdc.org.br/10000women/Paginas/default.aspx

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