International Women’s Day 101: Empowering Rural Women to Climb out of the Poverty Cycle
This Thursday, March 8th, marked the 101st International Women’s Day. There are almost as many celebratory themes for the day as there are countries and women’s organizations. Many of the Oxfam Canada branches, in keeping with Oxfam’s GROW campaign, have opted to create International Women’ Day celebrations around the theme of women, food, and the planet.
As I’ve explained in other posts, the GROW campaign draws attention to the fact that our global food system is broken and women—especially poor, rural women who grow much of the food for the world—are most affected by the injustices and power imbalances that have contributed to our dysfunctional global food system. Yet, if we righted the injustices and corrected the imbalances to create a level playing field, the large numbers of women agricultural workers in the developing world could not only lift themselves out of poverty[1] , they could produce enough food to prevent up to 150 million people from going hungry[2].
Breaking Down the Barriers to Empowering Rural Women
This year, the United Nations’ International Women’s Day theme focuses on empowering rural women to end poverty and hunger. Rural women and girls account for 25% of the global population[3] and almost 70% of the agricultural labour force in some parts of the developing world (e.g., South Asia). In addition to their (under)paid work in the fields, rural women and girls also carry the burden for doing the unpaid chores related to caring for family members; they often spend 16 – 18 hour days on both types of work.
Rural women are probably the hardest working group of people in the world. Through their paid and unpaid labour, they make significant contributions to their families and communities as well as to their local and national economies. According to Michelle Bachelet, the Executive Director of UN Women, rural women are key agents of change in the fight to eradicate hunger and poverty and it is crucial that their contributions and voices be heard in decision making processes at all levels of governance.[4]
I completely agree with Bachelet: rural women’s voices should be heard by decision makers at all levels—especially if those decisions have significant consequences for women’s lives. Yet I wonder if, in developing countries, rural women’s lack of education[5]–along with a number of other barriers that contribute to or perpetuate their lack of economic and social power as individuals—leaves them vulnerable to the policy agendas of others. At best, rural women and girls have occasionally been the recipients of poorly planned or haphazardly delivered development programs[6] that failed to consider their priorities, unique needs, or restrictions placed on them by traditional cultural beliefs or practices. At worst, rural women’s contributions have been overlooked and their rights ignored or denied by both local and international hierarchical structures.
We know that education and skills development (along with access to micro credit and other resources) for girls and women is the key to improving rural productivity, employability and income opportunities for women[7]. Yet, training programs that are not tailored to rural women’s priorities and needs add to rather than remove the barriers to getting the skills and resources that will enhance their employability. Likewise, if programs for women and girls are not accompanied by village-wide education or consciousness raising campaigns around the value of educating and training women, there will be little, if any, acceptance for the programs from either the men or women.
There is no doubt that multiple barriers (e.g., limited or no access to resources, lower educational levels, unquestioned norms about “appropriate” work for women) keep rural women trapped in a cycle of low status, low paying work—and the economic scarcity that goes along with it. This cycle is often inadvertently perpetuated by development programs that focus on providing vocational training in traditional (and lower paying) women-dominated fields, rather than identifying and creating training opportunities in non-traditional fields that would support rural women in securing better paying, more secure work[8].
Forward thinking social enterprises and NGOs might conceivably collaborate to design non-traditional job training programs with an educational component (e.g., basic literacy skills) that lead to decent paying jobs and increased independence for rural women with a limited formal education. Quite by chance, I recently learned of a social enterprise (It is comprised of both a business and an NGO) started by three Nepali sisters that offers exactly this kind of program for rural, underprivileged Nepali women. These three siblings chose to push the boundaries of a highly traditional society when they started training uneducated, under-privileged rural Nepali women as Trekking guides and assistants.
Empowering Women in Nepal: Breaking with tradition is an uphill climb—literally
When we think of Nepal, we most likely visualize snow-capped Himalayan peaks towering above valleys and glacier-fed lakes and rivers, peaceful Hindu and Buddhist temples in secluded forests, and of course the male trekking and climbing guides who accompany mountain climbers obsessed with “conquering” the soaring peaks of Annapurna and other peaks in the Nepalese Himalayan range.
Most of us probably haven’t stopped to consider why we don’t see any women in this picture, let alone ponder the status of Nepali women or their quality of life in a mostly rural, highly traditional and patriarchal society. But the three Chhetri sisters knew only too well that most Nepali women, especially in rural locations, work long hours in fields and in their homes for no pay, lead highly restricted social lives (they are expected to stay within the home), receive no or minimal education, and have no sense of their own value or worth as persons. (If I’ve piqued your curiosity, you can read more about women in Nepali society, here.)
In response to hearing stories about female trekkers who’d had bad experiences with their male guides, the sisters saw a need to provide female guides for women trekkers and a means of making a positive difference in the lives of under-privileged Nepali women. The Chhetri sisters started their trekking company in 1994, and started training other women in 1996. In 1999, they founded a non-government organization Empowering Women of Nepal to handle the training program for women trekking guides and take on a number of other charitable projects. The sisters hire the trainees, fully trained, and apprentice guides through their socially responsible adventure tourism company, 3 Sisters Adventures. The trainees and apprentices are paid the same rates as a male guide would be paid and the women are also provided with English language training. The guides are also trained in ecotourism and environmentally sustainable strategies for trekking (e.g., waste disposal, etc).
So how has a “radical” (by traditional Nepali standards) program that trains women to do non-traditional work fared since it started in the mid 1990s? It would appear that while it has been a struggle, the three sisters seem to have succeeded in their vision and mission to both empower Nepali women and provide a valuable service for women trekkers who feel more comfortable with having a woman guide. The Chhetri sisters have gone from training less than 25 women per year in 1999, to 72 women per year in 2010. Furthermore, a feature article about the trekking company in a women’s adventure travel magazine highlights the fact that not only have their women guides made a positive difference in their own lives, they have also made a difference in the quality of life to their families and communities. Their company was also included as a case study in a 2010 UN report, Global Report on Women in Tourism.
Empowering Women through Socially Responsible Travel and Business
I found out about the 3 Sisters Adventures trekking company through a fellow member of a LinkedIn discussion group on international women’s rights. Joe Staiano, a travel consultant who specializes in organizing socially responsible tours, had posted a note describing how he organizes socially responsible, meaningful trips that focus on important global development and social justice issues such as women’s issues, youth issues, eradicating poverty, or environmental sustainability. He had specifically mentioned the 3 Sisters Adventures company in Nepal both as an example of the kind of socially responsible tourism operation that he partners with for his tours, and as an example of how a socially responsible tourism business can serve as a social change agent. I was equally intrigued by the concept of meaningful, socially responsible travel and what inspired Joe to get involved with this kind of travel consulting, so I contacted him and mentioned that I’d like to include him in my upcoming book, Small Business, Big Change: A Micro-entrepreneur’s Guide to Social Responsibility.
Joe willingly agreed to an interview and enthusiastically shared why he’s inspired to merge global issues with meaningful travel. What inspires and motivates him to specialize in organizing meaningful travel tours (mostly for US citizens) is a keen desire to not just introduce people to new cultures but also raise their awareness of social issues and keep them engaged and motivated to be social activists once they return home. For his part, when he isn’t travelling, he volunteers his time with various community organizations, follows various social justice discussion groups, and has recently started a meaningful travel meetup group to get individuals talking about social issues and sustainable tourism.
Through partnering with local businesses who in turn partner with NGOs and Foundations, Joe has been able to organize educational and experiential activities that address important social issues related to empowering women or alleviating poverty. From the business side of the equation, he has a clear policy about selecting local partners (in the destination country) who meet specific standards around environmental, socio-economic and hiring practices (e.g., number of women or other economically disadvantaged groups hired by the organization). For Joe, ensuring that his meaningful travel business is aligned with socially responsible business practices is part of who he is as a person and an entrepreneur.
Business owners can make a difference to women’s economic participation in a number of ways. They can implement socially responsible initiatives related to working conditions and wages for goods produced overseas; find ways to work with local and overseas NGOs that provide vocational training for women; volunteer time or provide in-kind donations to local women’s groups; serve as mentors for women entrepreneurs; include small, women owned businesses as suppliers and vendors in the value(s) chain; and/or partner with employment training programs to give disadvantaged women a much needed opportunity to gain work experience and confidence.
What Else Can We Do to Make a Difference?
If we want to empower women in developing countries to break out of the poverty trap, we can:
- Choose not to buy clothes and accessories manufactured in sweat shops or sites that do not provide safe, fair working conditions and instead support clothing manufacturers that value women’s labour and/or provide training for disadvantaged women.
- Keep in mind that rural women in developing countries do most of the agriculture work and support those women by opting for organic and fair trade food items whenever possible
- Make socially responsible choices about how and where we travel, and support local women’s businesses at our destination. (You can also contact Joe through his website if you have specific questions about locating socially responsible accommodations, tours, etc.)
- Advocate for policy or legislative changes that would level the playing field for rural women in developing countries who are impacted by unfair trade agreements or land grabs. (Write to your MP or Congress person.)
- Join an organization like Oxfam and actively help raise awareness about the connections between gender inequality, poverty, and hunger.
It’s your turn. What would you add to this list of actions? Do you know of any women owned businesses or socially responsible businesses that make a positive difference in women’s lives? What inspires you about the organization? How could you transform the inspiration into action?
Susan Chambers
March 8, 2012
[1]Women comprise 70% of the world’s poor. http://www.oxfam.ca/what-we-do/womens-equality
[2] Sixty percent of the world’s hungry people are women and girls. (source: Oxfam Canada, GROW campaign website, accessed March 7, 2011
[3] Michelle Bachelet, Executive Director of UN Women, International Women’s Day 2012 Message, accessed March 7, 2012.
[4] Commission on the Status of Women, 2012. http://www.unwomen.org/how-we-work/csw/csw-56/. Accessed March 7, 2012.
[5] Globally, the rate of secondary school attendance by rural girls is 39%, compared to 45% for rural boys and 59% for urban girls. Literacy rates range from a low of 22% among rural women in Burkina Faso to a high of 52% in rural Cambodia. Cited in FAO-ILO’s Gender and Policy Brief #2: Investing in skills for socio-economic development of rural women (2010, p. 1) http://www.fao-ilo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/fao_ilo/pdf/02EducationAndSkills_WEB.pdf, accessed March 6, 2012.
[6]Michelle Bachelet, Executive Director of UN Women, International Women’s Day 2012 Message, accessed March 7, 2012.
[7] FAO-ILO’s Gender and Policy Brief #2: Investing in skills for socio-economic development of rural women (2010, p. 1.), http://www.fao-ilo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/fao_ilo/pdf/02EducationAndSkills_WEB.pdf, Accessed March 6, 2012.
[8]Ibid, p.2.
March 9, 2012
Posted in: Social Justice 
2 Comments
Break out of the Heart-shaped Box this Valentine’s Day: Be Creative and Think Green
The best things
in life are free—except in the middle of February.
Valentine’s Day often feels like an odd “holiday” to me. It’s supposed to be a celebration of love, a gift that is freely given, yet we’ve been convinced that we have to spend a small fortune one day a year to show how much we love someone. Saint Valentine’s Day allegedly started as an observance of two martyrs, both named Valentine, who sacrificed their lives to help others. The observance had no connection with romantic love prior to a poem written by Chaucer in the fourteenth century. By the late fifteenth century, the emphasis of Valentine’s Day was on exchanging tokens of affection between lovers within the upper classes, the nobility, with no mention of the martyred saints.
I’m all for expressing affection for our loved ones. It would be a much kinder world if we practiced the underlying premises of Valentine’s Day—occasionally putting another person’s needs before our own and showing our loved ones that we care about them—every day instead of just one day out of the year. What leaves me increasingly cool towards Valentine’s Day is the excessive hype and commercialization that has transformed it into one more opportunity for an economy hooked on consumer spending to rake in billions of dollars[1].
The ability of the advertising industry to foster unrealistic expectations—not to mention anxiety about choosing or paying for the “perfect” gift—through carefully crafted story boards that depict ultra-romantic date settings and couples lavishing expensive gifts on each other is disconcerting. Yet even when we realize this, we don’t always know how to increase our immunity to the commercial hype and shut out the siren songs of our consumer culture. I don’t know about you, but I’ve realized, over the years, that as much as I appreciated them the gifts or the dinner dates given from a sense of obligation just aren’t as sweet as the unexpected gifts or spontaneous expressions of affection.
Considering that love is supposed to be freely given, there is a mighty high price tag attached to proving—er, I mean demonstrating—our feelings for our nearest and dearest on February 14th, and I’m not referring just to the financial cost of buying presents or paying for an extra special date night[2]. How many of us stop to think about the environmental and social costs attached to many of the Valentine’s Day gifts that we buy?
Make Valentine’s Day planet friendly and fantastic: Give gifts that are fair trade and Organic.
What with the cards, wrapping paper, flowers, clothes, electronic gadgets, chocolate, and jewellery, Valentine’s Day has big feet in terms of the carbon and ecological footprints it leaves behind. The social costs—economic inequalities, health problems, and social injustices—associated with producing many of the traditional Valentine’s Day presents(e.g., chocolate and flowers) are also sobering. The darker side of cacao farming has been well documented by Carol Off in her book Bitter Chocolate.
It isn’t just cocoa production that is plagued by distasteful labour practices. Many of the labourers in the floriculture, textile and mining industries also endure poor wages, unsafe, and unfair working conditions. Low wages, long hours, and no consequences for failing to provide appropriate safety equipment for workers translate into lower production costs that allow the owners of the production facilities to make a profit and still offer their goods at affordable prices for those of us in the Global North so we can buy chocolates and flowers to show much we love another person. Yet, it isn’t exactly showing a lot of love for our fellow beings on the planet when we benefit economically at their expense, is it?
The good news is that it is possible to celebrate Valentine’s Day in a socially responsible and environmentally sustainable manner—without decimating your personal long term financial sustainability. In order to raise awareness about fair trade and help people locate and purchase fair trade items, organizations such as the Canadian Fair Trade Network (CFTN) and Fair Trade Vancouver have launched “Be my Fair Valentine” campaigns over the last few years.
Both the CFTN and Fair Trade Vancouver websites include information about why it’s important to buy fair trade chocolates and flowers, and where you can find other fair trade items, including jewellery made from fairly mined metals and gems and fairly traded handicrafts from around the world. The CFTN also lists sources for eco-friendly clothing, if you’d rather buy clothes as a gift. A note on choosing eco-friendly fashion gifts: According to a seamstress (She owns a company called Conscious Elegance and custom makes eco-conscious wedding dresses) whom I recently interviewed for a book project on socially responsible micro-entrepreneurs (Small Business, Big Change: The Microentrepreneur’s Guide to Social Responsibility), you may want to consider both the sustainability of the plant and the process used to convert the plant into material when assessing the overall eco-friendliness of various fabrics.
In Vancouver, where I live, Fair Trade Vancouver and Oxfam Canada—a long time advocate of fair trade—teamed up for a flash mob in the downtown shopping area, earlier this month, to promote Fair Trade Vancouver’s “Be my Fair Valentine” campaign and Oxfam’s Unwrapped campaign. Rather than giving into the demands of consumerism, and spending money on “stuff”, consider donating money to programs that empower individuals in developing nations to break out of the poverty cycle, either through providing individuals with the resources (e.g. a goat or a beehive) that can generate an income or a micro loan to start a small business. I’ve focused on donation programs that are tied to social justice and economic equality, but you could just as easily make a donation to support the costs of maintaining a sanctuary for animals from neglectful or abusive environments, or to an environmental organization.
Here are a few other ideas for having a sustainable and happy Valentine’s Day:
- By-pass the greeting cards. If you want to send Valentine greetings to your near and dear ones (including family and friends), send e-cards. If you feel really compelled to send a greeting printed on paper, consider making your own cards from 100% recycled paper. The best example of reducing and reusing comes from a news story I read yesterday: One married couple in Britain has apparently been exchanging the same Valentine’s card back and forth for the past 70 years.
- Skip the wrapping paper and choose a reusable gift bag. Better yet, wrap the gift in a cloth bag.
- If you want to give a gift, consider choosing a service (e.g., a meal preparation service or a spa treatment) that the recipient might appreciate more than “yet more stuff”.
- Stay at home and cook a meal from local, organic, or fair trade ingredients.
- Break out of the heart-shaped box for two. Express your appreciation and affection for all the people in your life and throw a party for your friends.
I’ll leave you with the following radical invitation from the Daily Good and encourage you to have fun creating earth friendly and inclusive ways to celebrate the power of love.
[1] Valentine’s Day spending amounts to billions of dollars each year. Retailers anticipate a grand sum of just over $17 billion on Valentine’s Day spending this year.
[2] According to the National Retail Federation’s 2012 survey, roughly $ 4 billion will be spent on jewellery, $3.5 billion spent on dinners at restaurants, $1.8 billion will be spent on flowers (mostly red roses), and $1.5 billion will be spent on candy this year.
February 14, 2012
Posted in: Social Justice, Uncategorized 2 Comments
Groundhogs, Dragons, and Reigniting the Creative Flame
Groundhogs and Dragons
By the time February rolls around,
We are tired of slogging through rain or slush on the ground.
Eagerly, we wait to be told
Whether we’ll have an early spring or more of winter’s bitter cold.
What an odd rite is this modern day omen
Of a groundhog emerging from his den.
Will the jittery creature see his shadow and run,
Or might he stay outside and bask in a wintery sun?
Meanwhile the dragon coiled at the base of the tree,
Cares not about shadows, senses only a shifting energy
As the angle of the sun’s rays shift and grow longer,
Warming the dragon and making it stronger.
Undaunted by the groundhog’s skittishness and fear,
The dragon makes its first majestic appearance,
To chase away the stale old year,
And get the New Year started with its colorful spring dance.
Sue Chambers
February, 2008
The groundhogs have spoken—albeit not with a unified voice. (You can see the list of contradicting predictions here.) If you live in Ontario or Nova Scotia, you have a 30-40% chance of seeing an early spring. If you live in Alberta, Manitoba, or Pennsylvania, you might be in for another six weeks of winter–depending on whether you believe the groundhogs or the meteorologists at the weather network.
If we really want agreeable weather and just the right amount of rainfall, we should probably be currying favour with dragons since they are the rulers of water and weather, according to Chinese mythology. We have also just ushered in the year of the Dragon with the Chinese New Year’s celebration on January 23rd. In eastern Asia, dragons are generally regarded as benevolent and as symbols of power, strength and luck, so the year of the Dragon is considered exceptionally auspicious. Dragons are also associated with the life force energy that increases as the days gradually lengthen and warm up in the spring.
In the old Celtic cultures, February 2, Imbolc, was observed as the start of spring and new beginnings. A festival honouring Brighid, the Celtic goddess of poetry (and inspiration and creativity more generally), smithcraft, and healing was also held on this day.
If, like me, your creative drive and energy levels took a cue from the groundhog and went into hibernation over the winter months, here are some suggestions for dusting off the winter sluggishness and reigniting your creative flame.
- Do an early spring clean and sort through any clutter that might have accumulated over the winter months. I don’t know about you, but I find that when my surroundings get too cluttered, my energy drags and my creative flow is clogged.
- While taking a shower or a bath, imagine washing away any mental, emotional, or energetic clutter and dust that have accumulated over the winter. A drop of rosemary, citrus or eucalyptus essential oil on the floor of the shower stall smells wonderful and is both cleansing and invigorating.
- Get outside and go for a walk near a river or stream. The negative ions generated by the water will also help to clear the mind and stimulate some new thoughts or ideas. Take a tip from my friend Kate’s book on inner work, and “notice what you notice” while you’re on your walk. It’s amazing what catches our attention when we’re in the moment instead of dwelling in the past or fussing about the future.
- Draw on the meditative and healing power of a candle flame with this meditation.
How do you get your muse or creative energy fired up again after a long winter’s nap? What new projects are you working on this year? What new beginnings are opening up in your life? I invite you to share your ideas and inspirations in the comments section.
Here’s to an auspicious year of the dragon and a refreshed, in
spired muse with a spring in her step.
February 3, 2012
Posted in: Creative process, Spirituality 4 Comments