Empowerment of Women

Written by Sushanth KP

In first-world countries, empowering women by placing them in typically male industries generally mean an increase in safety. FMC mines loves employing women in their mines because although women are going to have to work more slowly because of the physical constraints, this allows for an overall increase in safety; less on-site injuries and of course fewer deaths. In management, woman ask more questions, are generally less competitive, and will admit more willingly when they don't understand something. Men aren't smarter than women; women are just more vocal about what they don't know. This leads to improved communication and fewer missteps for big projects.Humanity as a whole can be considered more civilized. We will have less violence against women as they will be less afraid to take action against such things. We will have more specialists and minds focused on improving our future. Disadvantages are mainly for men, but it will create more competition in the workplace for the same amount of jobs and possibly reduce the rate of reproduction (possibly an advantage).In countries where there are educated women,there is less chances of developing population explotion.

Women can plan about their future and chances of unplanned pregnancies will be lesser creating a better environment to lower income families.Overall there are many advantages of women getting educated and employed.Imagine a world where women are given their rightful place, not exactly a higher place than men but an equal place ,there will be less conflicts, no war,more compassion and understanding. In 2001,Harvard scientists have found that the frontal lobe of the brain which is responsible for decision making and problem solving is larger in females than in males.so, a woman in biologically and psychologically more competent in being in managerial positions than men.

If you're a lady still concerned about the size issues let's address that now. In female brains, the neurons are packed in tightly, so that they're closer together. This proximity, in conjunction with speedy connections facilitated by the white matter, is another reason why women's brains work faster. Some women even have as many as 12 percent more neurons than men do .In studying women's brains, psychologist Sandra Witelson found that those neurons were most densely crowded on certain layers of the cortex, namely the ones responsible for signals coming in and out of the brain. This, Witelson believed, may be one reason why women tend to score higher on tests that involve language and communication, and she came to believe that these differences were present from birth . All this ultimately tells us that women are better at some workplaces than men. All this is of use only if a woman is educated in certain fields to begin with a career in which she is certain to excel. In the 18th century a woman wasn't even allowed to get a formal educations. 

Only in the late 19th century did a girl start going to school and college. Even then she wasn't allowed to work. In the beginning of the 20th century, 'feminism' opened doors to woman employment. The real question is, was the word 'feminism' really required to get a woman started with a career ,wasn't it mother nature's original intended structure to have equality between males and females,if that was so why are women not treated the same as men even though they are biologically superior to men. If not superiors at least treat them as equals.

Feminism and empowerment: from “what” to “why”

There are so many articles in this blog, which touch upon the large variety of topics, connected with feminism, suffering women and female empowerment. The interesting thing is that all of them answer such questions as “what”, “when”, “who” but almost none of them answer the most important question “why”.  Few weeks ago, I watched a video from TED-talks, named “How great leaders inspire actions”, on which Simon Sinek shares his knowledge about starting all great deals not from the question “what” but “why”. Surely, all of authors/writers/translators/editors know why they are involved in the issue of feminism; moreover, they may have own specific motivations except common global one. But I know that simple readers are not always acquainted with the primary goals which the creators of the blog/project have. They can see the cover but not the kernel, and it can stop them from bringing online-received ideas to life.

When people ask my opinion about various situations which include gender issue, I always answer that I am a person who supports the idea of gender equality. From this position, feminism is something that is not needed to be examined. However, the history of human society’s development illustrates a lot of cases when women are suppressed and considered to be the lower living creature than a man. It happens not because religious books, prophets or gurus tell that women should be treated in a bad way; it mostly happens because people are used to misinterpret the teachings in order to subject somebody to their will. Therefore, as for me, feminism appears as a way of resistance. It resists those personalities who think that they have all rights to manipulate, offend women or treat them as non-humans. 

That is how I found an explanation for myself why I support the idea of women empowerment and want others to realize how topical this issue is. It should not be a process which leads to making women more significant than men but a process which is going to create a stable basis for women’s existence. It means that every female personality would feel confidence in her current and future safety and also potentialities for own realization in the sphere she wants. So, we should view this empowerment as something that lifts those women that live in developing countries on the level of equality with males. While believing into this idea as a required condition of welfare and happiness of both women and men in developing and developed countries, we will undoubtedly make gradual steps to the mutual respect and understanding. 

By Polina Nezdiikovska, Ukraine

Talking to the Top: Women’s Empowerment and the Mobile Phone

While wireless internet technology is taking the world by storm, boosting businesses and churning out market leaders, for the resource poor developing world, it is the telecommunications technology that’s making waves. Four out of every five new mobile connections are being made in developing countries, according to the mobile phone industry body, the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA). They also report that about 41 percent of all female business owners in developing countries had higher earnings because they had access to a phone.

In Third World countries, traditional rural communities are characterized by limited infrastructure and low literacy rates, especially amongst women. Women are largely marginalized and given a conservative environment, they are primarily dependent upon a middleman be it their husbands, the village elder or the local teacher. They are often inaccessible and have been known to impose exorbitant fees and unfair conditions for their services. By providing access to a mobile phone, the middleman is eliminated as is the need to travel large distances to use a phone.

Based on this preemptive, several schemes have been developed worldwide to provide access to mobile phones. In Bangladesh, the Grameen Bank  introduced its Village Phone scheme in 2002 that provides modern telecommuncations services to the rural poor. A Grameen Bank member, usually a woman, obtains ownership of a mobile phone under the lease – financing program of the bank. She then uses the phone either for her own business purposes or as a mobile service provider for her neighbours. Following the rapid success of the Village Phone scheme in Bangladesh, the system was then rolled out in Uganda in 2003.

CellBazaar, an initiative by GrameenTelecomm (a sister concern of Grameen Bank) is the e-bay equivalent that provides easy access to the mobile market place for Bangladeshi villagers. Sokhina, a mother of two and a budding entrepreneur has cashed in on Grameen’s CellBazaar initiative and now makes a modest income from selling her handicrafts on the market. Mobile technology means that her illiteracy is not a hindrance anymore and many rural women have transformed themselves into entrepreneurs.

Schemes in Zimbabwe and India are being developed to enable easy money transfer between income earners and their family members living in isolated villages. In crime riddled areas, M-banking would allow people to send money safely from their mobile phones to those of their families, who would be able to redeem cash from mobile airtime sellers where they live.

Readily accessible information via the mobile has gone a long way to help micro- entrepreneurs. One example is Lucy’s story.  Lucy, a micro-farmer in Kenya was struggling with an outbreak of pests in her potato crop and called the GSMA’s m-Kilimo helpline for assistance. Experts on the line talked Lucy through the process of caring for her crop and she was able to have a bountiful harvest that year.

The introduction of mobile phones in villages has abundant benefits, the most profound of which are reduced transaction costs, quicker access to information and less isolation. Women in particular profit by supplementing their families’ incomes and fending for themselves.

Realising the potential for empowering women via access to mobile phones, the GSMA has launched a global public-private partnership between the worldwide mobile industry and the international development community. The Programme aims to reduce the mobile phone gender gap by 50% by 2014, enabling mobile ownership and effective usage for more than 150 million women in emerging markets including by providing access to financial, healthcare and education services.

Written by

Samai Haider

THE INVISIBLE MARRIAGE OF YOU AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Are you a woman? Have had a white wedding? Or planning one in the future? I’ll let me you in on a simple view to life that’s going to make you a better woman. And so, if you are married and are penniless today or any day from today, you have no one but yourself to blame.

It’s a fact that the African woman will or would have planned her special day according to social and economic positions she finds herself. Perhaps she can’t afford the wedding planner, most can’t.

And so I’m thinking; anyone who ever got married and had been involved in the planning of their own wedding, honeymoon, deciding the wedding theme, picking up rings, choosing a pastor, the venue, organising guests, the cake, the dj, cows, grooms & bridesmaids, leading your respective family during the lobola negotiations, controlling your fiancé on how and where to spend money and also keeping everything inline with the wedding theme to the last detail.

If you look at the above statement, there is enough proof that people who plan a functional, successful wedding on their own can become entrepreneurs and manage what it is, a business. For example, a theme has got a lot to do with the couple’s taste, likings, creativity, feel, affordability, experience, risk taking attitude, and a whole list of personality features. These characters are likely to be seen in an entrepreneur and their business. Entrepreneurs must know how to manage a business and a wedding is exactly like a business, there’s a need for management.

Imagine if I were to give you an assignment to find the definition of what is Management? I am sure every book and definition you’re going to find will define management under the acronym: POLC. This stands for Planning, Organising, Leading and Controlling, and all these are mentioned in the third paragraph. Also look up the definition of an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur can be defined as the person with the ability to create an enterprise where none existed before (Niewenhuizen & Strydom, 2007). It is the person who produces a combination of ideas, skills, money, equipments and markets that form a successful enterprise.

I would actually be inclined to believe that there are different levels of entrepreneurship and allow me to explain them. For the man on the street who sell from a kiosk or a door-to-door business might be one level of entrepreneurship, the second level of entrepreneurship is where you have the normal business practices to a point where the business really thrives in the industry and employs approximately 100 employees with a turnover of 05million per annum. The third level of entrepreneurship is where you have a business operating on an annual turnover of between 05 and 30million. The fourth & last level of entrepreneurship is when a business makes a turnover of 30million and over 100million per annum, also employing over 80 000 employees. (These are called corporate or industrial entrepreneurs).

Let’s focus at the second level of entrepreneurship. In the Southern Africa, these are called SMMEs (Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises) people of all ages, especially woman are encouraged both by the private sector and government to establish these kinds of businesses in hope you alleviate poverty and create youth employment. Most of these businesses don’t really have all management functions like Marketing department or IT, Finance, Customer Care, Production, or HR department. Everything is dependant on the owner and/or owners.

Let’s assume the husband and the wife are business partners or owner/managers. Then who does the marketing? Have you ever seen a woman who is about to get married? Or perhaps they’ve just got engaged, and have this big & beautiful diamond ring on. I don’t think the fiancé in question would lounge around the couch on weekend, watching television and doing nothing.

Practically (and please I am not the one to blame), she will be out there organising a coffee meeting or some sort of get-together with her “girlfriends” and all they talk about is the man, the future husband. Don’t you think that makes a great marketer? A marketer’s job is to make sure that people know about the product, familiarise them with the product or service. That’s the actual wedding and the husband; how sweet and charming man he is and very handy around the house. If they bought your story, which by the sound of things they will—then what? It’s a definite that they’ll cancel all their plans and come to your wedding, and then your marketing is sorted, simple as 10-111.

As always, the husband will become the CEO, COO, FCO, slash Head of Production (this is where issues of reproduction are buzzing above your head all over the doorways. Making children and expanding the family is the most important thing to any man alive), Strategic HRM and IT specialist (who protects the family against the viruses and any other threatening actions or dangerous behaviours onto the family, family value systems, culture, and the norms). Whereas the wife becomes the Marketing manager slash PRO, Production manager (making sure that you produce high quality products), Administration Officer, Business Analyst & Advisor, Business Development Manager, HR Practitioner, Customer Care (offering the best hospitality to her guests whenever they drop-in from the mother-in-law or father-in-law, this or that in-law without appointments) and the list is endless.

Then we talk of “manpower,” the children. These are your seniors and juniors hard at work, sometimes they make mistakes, they do as they please, they abuse company’s resources and as always someone (a parent) needs to manage them and resolve their disputes, and I bet with you there will be lots of them. And who does these interventions? HR Practitioner (the mother, the wife). She will then have to report back to Strategic HRM and together reach consensus as to how they’re going to deal with the juniors (subordinates). Say the verdict was: They get grounded and that they will not have lunchbox, pocket money or they will not be allowed to watch TV after 7:00pm making sure that they miss all their favourite TV shows for the next three weeks until they correct their mistakes and behaviour. In the corporate world, we call this suspension without pay.

Of course at some point they’ll do the boss proud (the father/CEO) and he will then take them out for dinner or lunch (we call this staff bonding or Christmas party for some organisations). Both the father and the mother are responsible to lead their children, also by educating them on what’s right and what’s wrong, how to behave, and basically all those value systems, the norms and of cause their culture.

Then it comes a point where children have learned under your arm and now they feel they’ve grown enough to be on their own. You know what we always say to our bosses when we leave the company? “Thank you so much sir/Ma’am for giving me the opportunity to work for VW Company. I have the best memories working for the company and that I will always miss this place and my colleagues. I feel that my decision to take up this new job is the great opportunity for me to explore and learn more about XYZ job or the industry.”

Most bosses, oh well, the good ones, if you’ve been a good employee to them, they’ll buy you a nice little present to send you off to your new job or company even your mother, in this case your HR Practitioner/Marketing manager/PRO/Ops Manager and a Client Care will throw you a brief farewell party. I actually want someone to sit on the other site of their computer and argue with me that our parents did not do this.

It’s amazing how we live this life without being observant enough to realise that what we’ve always wanted is just under our nose or yet we’ve been there; done it all, but we just don’t open our eyes wide enough to see opportunities that can make us millionaires and billionaires. I say; if you’re married or once got married and had planned your own wedding, you can start your own successful business and run it like no body’s business!

These are just my thoughts, my inspiration I want to pass to all the women, especially women from developing countries who are encouraged to create jobs for themselves and others. It is also my way of helping you look at life in a light-hearted way and be able to laugh at it because at times can be such a burden and I’m sure it does mock at us when we plunge deeper on the ground falling out of failed plans.

“To achieve the impossible, one must think the absurd; to look where everyone else has looked, but to see what no else has seen!” – Unknown.

By Ngoako Jay Morokolo