You wouldn’t build a house without a blueprint, would you, so why are so many efforts to provide greater economic empowerment for women undertaken without a strategic framework? A rhetorical question, we know, but we’d like to call attention to the fact that folks are starting to realize that a framework for action can make governments and other actors more accountable, provide benchmarks and targets against which to chart progress, and give the women’s business community and other important stakeholders a soapbox for advocacy.
We write this because we’ve come across several new strategic framework reports we want to make sure all of you womenablers out there take a look at, bookmark, and file away for future reference and/or action.
First, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has published a Gender at the Heart of ICPD (International Conference on Population and Development): Strategic Framework on Gender Mainstreaming and Women’s Empowerment. While it does not focus much on enterprise development, gender equality, policy action and stakeholder engagement are central tenets covered in the publication. You might also want to take a look at their 30 second public service video, “Empower Women, Empower the Future,” which illustrates how a girl’s future can change with education rather than early marriage. (Puts us in mind of the excellent Girl Effect video.)
The UN agency in the Asia Pacific region, ESCAP, has also recently published a report looking at efforts that could be undertaken in that region to “strengthen national mechanisms” for gender equality and the empowerment of women. Learn more at THIS LINK. Sounds like a framework to us!
Next, there’s a new mid-term assessment of where things stand vis-a-vis MDG3, the Millennium Development Goal related to women’s empowerment. This AWID review of the Dutch MDG3 Fund shows the ways in which targeted investments can really make a difference in organizational capacity and women’s increased participation in advocacy and the political process, which has a ripple effect in other areas of women’s economic empowerment.
And, finally, we would be remiss if we did not mention and remind you of the Roadmap to 2020 report, spearheaded and published by Quantum Leaps in 2010, which focused on what women’s entrepreneurship stakeholders in the United States should do to move the agenda forward. It joins the October 2003 Prime Minister’s Task Force report in Canada and the May 2003 Strategic Framework report in the United Kingdom as a trilogy of policy and program recommendations to be undertaken in a developed economy context (which, truth be told, is not terribly different from areas of focus in developing economies).
