Women celebrate with focus on attaining economic stability

NEW YORK. – International Women’s Day, an annual United Nations campaign to publicise efforts to create gender equality worldwide, will be celebrated today under the theme “Invest in women: Accelerate progress.”

The idea is that enabling women’s economic stability can go a long way toward achieving equality efforts.

Jemimah Njuki, chief of the economic empowerment section at UN Women, said this year’s theme is pressing because “the world is actually at a crucial crossroads for gender equality.”

She noted that globally, women’s rights are increasingly coming under threat, or being rolled back, even in places where leaders thought they had made progress. According to UN Women, one in every 10 women today lives in extreme poverty. Their studies show that about 340 million women and girls — 8 percent of the world’s female population — will not have moved out of extreme poverty by 2030 if trends continue.

A core tenant of this year’s IWD is “implementing gender-responsive financing,” an economic strategy that considers and analyses the diverse needs of every person, including the historical underinvestment in essential services for women and girls, to ensure a fair distribution of resources.

Women often bear the brunt of caretaking and budgeting duties in a household — especially in periods of crisis — when there is increased pressure on care systems and governments.

According to the UN Women’s Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals snapshot for 2023, there is a US$360 billion funding gap from governments for organisations and programmes that support women.

Ambassador Keisha McGuire, the special envoy and special adviser on gender equality and women’s empowerment for the United Nations General Assembly president, discussed how the president of the GA is working to “mainstream gender” in the assembly’s work to build a space where both men and women can thrive.

McGuire noted there are major barriers in the international system because it was not built with a gender lens, making the prioritisation and funding of gender equality efforts all the more imperative.

“Implementation largely depends on what? The funding to be able to implement,” McGuire said. “So, you can talk about gender mainstreaming, you can talk about policies that are gender responsive, but if you don’t make the necessary investments for that to become reality, you really, truly are not bringing it over the finish line.”

Robyn Nietert, the president and co-founder of the Women’s Microfinance Initiative, which provides microloans to women in poor, rural areas of Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, said giving women loans to start their own businesses results in improved household living standards and support for families.

“People are economically active, otherwise, you’re dead,” Nietert said. “If you’re not economically active, you’ve got to be doing something to get enough money to eat food, to get water, to have some place to live. So, virtually every time you make a loan, you are creating a success story because you’re giving [to] somebody who has nothing, and it’s still managing to survive a financial resource where they can start a business.”

The Women’s Microfinance Initiative also provides financial literacy training to teach women how to manage their money once they have it.

“It makes people feel like they have control of their lives,” Nietert said, while also acknowledging the ability for exploitation by organizations that claim they want to provide loans.

“It’s not a big mystery, what exploitation is in the lending world,” Nietert said. “It’s outrageous — interest rates, outrageous fees, huge amounts of collateral having to be pledged, not giving grace periods, taking the collateral, which then, of course, prohibits anybody from getting out of debt.” – Agencies