Women’s Economic Empowerment

Our approach to women’s economic empowerment is geared towards enabling women and girls enhance their access to economic resources and the ability to make decisions that benefit themselves, their families and their communities.

Our approach goes beyond short-term solutions; we are dedicated to instigating transformational changes in societal norms and economic structures. By challenging existing paradigms, we aim to contribute to a more equitable landscape where women and men can thrive equally. Through these efforts, we strive to build a future where women and girls can exercise their economic autonomy, contributing not only to their individual growth but also to the prosperity of their families and communities.

We implement this though the following ways: –

Financial inclusion

WORUDET promotes an innovative savings-led financial inclusion first Established by Care International. This work around Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) is one key area WORUDET continues to champion and it is a powerful foundation for women’s economic empowerment efforts.

Promoting Dignified Work: WORUDET works to support women to gain equal access to quality work which is safe, fairly and equally rewarded, and to have improve labor rights, both legally and in practice, and to change attitudes to women’s productive vs. reproductive roles at household, community and structural levels greater levels of control over their earnings from this work. This requires a combination of efforts to

Women and value chains: We aim to significantly grow our value chain portfolio in selected priority economic sectors through: scaling up our existing work; working in larger Inclusive value chains.

Skilling Youth

Some of the key constraints within the community we work with include lack of skills and knowledge, limited control over economic resources and earnings, lower productivity in sectors that women typically engage in, and lack of access to credit and financial services. WORUDET supports women’s ability to build financially (and environmentally) sustainable, profitable and growing enterprises, with the potential to enter the formal economy, by targeting the specific vulnerabilities women face.

Unpaid Care Work

In general, women do far more unpaid care work than men. The burden of this work affects all women to some extent, but the disparity is greater and the consequences are most serious for women in poverty.

Girls and women spend many hours fetching water, collecting firewood, doing laundry, preparing food, caring for children and elderly relatives, and doing other household chores, often as well as working on farms. This work limits rural women’s opportunities to make their farms more sustainable and more productive, to access markets, to know how to claim their rights, and to participate in decision making. Unpaid care work is recognised in the Sustainable Development Goals but often not at community or national government levels. WORUDET approaches care work as a societal responsibility, using the concept of the ‘care diamond’ proposed by Shahra Razavi (United National Research Institute for Social Development, 2009) where the costs and work of care provision are distributed between the state, private, and voluntary sectors as well as families. Experience from WE-Care finds that defining care as a responsibility for society rather than a women’s issue has been successful in engaging men, public officials, and the private sector.

The Theory of Change underpinning WE-Care follows Diane Elson’s Framework of ‘Three Rs’ (2009), recognition, reduction, and redistribution; Oxfam and Action Aid added the fourth R of representation:

Recognizing the importance and significance of care work, so that women’s unpaid care work is valued by themselves, their families, the community, governments, and wider society.

Reducing difficult or inefficient tasks such as water/fuel collection, laundry, and cooking.

Redistributing care responsibility more equitably, between women and men, and between poor families and the state, employers, and civil society.

Representation: carers representing their interests in decision-making processes.