Supporting women’s ability to succeed and advance economically leads to healthy and productive households, growing businesses, and the well-being of communities and nations.
An estimated $28 trillion could be added to the global annual GDP by 2025 by advancing women’s equality. Women’s economic empowerment (WEE) refers to a process by which women
expand their ability to succeed and advance economically, and where they have the power to make and act on strategic life decisions in a context where this power was previously denied.
What We Aim to Achieve
SEEP is dedicated to addressing systemic barriers that limit women’s empowerment through knowledge mobilization, cross organizational learning, and strengthening partnerships and
alliances among diverse market actors. Our learning initiatives are designed to address common challenges amongst practitioners and create tangible opportunities to share promising practices,
co-create technical resources, and to promote a collective voice for improving policy and practice.
The SEEP Network, in collaboration with forum partners, hosted an international conference on women’s economic empowerment with the theme “Creating Systems Change for Scale and
Sustainability.” Over 350 participants from 60 countries convened to share promising practices for enterprise growth and job creation, financial inclusion, and women in agricultural
systems.
The goal of the Women’s Economic Empowerment Working Group (WEEWG) is to improve the ability practitioners to integrate and empower women in market systems.
This learning series is part of the AWEF project and will
engage diverse stakeholders to examine practical lessons and solutions in women’s economic empowerment.
MEDA's Jordan Valley Links project has been implementing market systems programming using both private sector and civil society partners. This technical paper explores the value of working wit…
2020 |Aatif Somji (International Labour Organization)
The COVID-19 crisis and ensuing confinement has brought to the fore a key constraint to women’s economic empowerment: the unequal, gendered distribution of unpaid care work. Even before…
لا تزال منطقة الشرق الأوسط و شمال أفريقيا لديها أكبر فجوة بين الجنسين في العالم من حيث المشاركة الاقتصادية للمرأة ؛ و ذلك بالرغم من التقدم الذي تم إحرازه خلال السنوات القليلة الماضية. و تظهر ه…
MEDA piloted Gender Progress Markers (GPM) in Jordan to measure women’s economic empowerment. GPM are a set of statements, describing a progression of changed behaviors for a target grou…
MEDA INNOVATE's new learning paper focuses on how decisions are made within agricultural households around production, including the adoption and uptake of new practices or inputs along with s…
Despite progress over the past few years, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region still has the largest gender gap in terms of women’s economic participation in the world. This ec…
For nearly 75 years, CARE has been working to address the root causes of suffering and to provide lifesaving humanitarian assistance to people in need. Operating in more than 100 countries, CA…
For nearly 75 years, CARE has been working to address the root causes of suffering and to provide lifesaving humanitarian assistance to people in need. Operating in more than 100 countries, CA…
On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organisation classified COVID-19 as a pandemic. Disease outbreaks affect women, girls, men, boys, and persons of all genders differently, to say nothing of t…
Worldwide, about 80 percent of Savings Group members are women (SAVIX 2019). Gendered participation rates in Savings Groups mirror those of the microfinance sector, which set a precedent of em…
Policies and regulations can either serve as barriers to employment opportunities for women or help to ensure that women are able to access the same employment opportunities as men or mitigate…
This detailed learning and reflection product is intended to provide practical learning and present selected existing tools being applied by CARE Country Offices (COs) in the Middle East and N…
To really understand whether a woman is able to realize her rights, exercise agency, and fully participate in economy and society requires us to understand how she feels about her ability to d…
WE EMPOWER places women’s economic empowerment at the heart of the future of work agenda. Through its guiding framework for private sector engagement, the Women’s Empowerment Princ…
This report was produced jointly by the World Bank’s Africa Region Gender Innovation Lab (GIL) and the Finance Competitiveness & Innovation (FCI) Global Practice. The World Bank&rsqu…
In 2018, CARE launched a 12-year VSLA scaling strategy with a goal of supporting 50 million women and girls – 65 million people overall – to form savings groups by 2030. Our commit…
2019 |Mansi Anand (Oxfam), Anna Mecagni (Women for Women International) & Maryam Piracha (PRISMA)
There is increasing interest from economic programs to better understand, measure and capture agency across interventions in order to more deliberately pursue women’s economic empowermen…
Three key issues motivated this research: (1) CARE’s ambition is to ensure that its CVA work is designed with and for women and girls, addressing their needs, challenges, and opportuniti…
Tres asuntos clave motivaron esta investigación: (1) La ambición de CARE es garantizar que su trabajo de PTM esté diseñado con y para mujeres y niñas, y que…
Trois questions clés ont motivé cette recherche : (1) L’objectif de CARE est de s’assurer que son TM est conçu avec et pour les femmes et les filles, et r&eacu…
برنامج المساعدات النقدية والقسائم ) CVA ( هو أحد ا أ لدوات الشائعة حاليًا في العمل ا إ لنسا ني ، ويستخدم في تلبية الاحتياجات المتنوعة للنازحي ن نتيجة ل أ لزمات والصراعات بشكل أك ث كرامة.…
This report, prepared by Nathan Associates for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Policy Support Unit, examines the process of structural reforms in APEC economies to remove barriers…
This case study adds new insights into existing guidance on WEE in MSD. It does by (1) examining widespread challenges to effective WEE mainstreaming in MSD programs, and (2) providing example…
As Savings Groups increasingly serve as a pillar of gender-focused programs, there is a need to better understand the pathways between Savings Groups and women’s empowerment. The purpose…
2019 |Julia Hakspiel (Arab Women's Enterprise Fund & MarketShare Associates)
This AWEF Practitioner Learning Brief provides a practical framework for development actors on how to develop a robust business case for private sector companies on the commercial value of emp…
This technical brief will outline the JVL GPM process, domains, and preliminary data on women’s economic empowerment as defined by our clients, partners, and staff. It will conclude with…
The purpose of this cash and voucher assistance (CVA) and gender-based violence (GBV) compendium is to assist humanitarian actors and crisis- and conflict-affected communities to: integrate GB…
Ce recueil de conseils pratiques sur les transferts monétaires (TM) et la violence basée sur le genre (VBG) a pour objectif d’aider les acteurs humanitaires et les communau…
ي مجال ) هذا هو مساعدة الجهات الفاعلة ف GBV ) والعنف القائم على النوع الاجتماعي ( CVAالغرض من ملخص المساعدات النقدية والقسائم ( العمل الإنساني والمجتمعات المتأثرة من الأزمات والنزاعات على:
4 .…
2019 |Katherine Rickard and Amalia Johnsson (Nathan Associates)
This learning brief examines the pathways between Savings Groups and women’s empowerment, the evidence with respect to various outcome areas, and how women’s empowerment outcomes c…
In 2008, Saving for Change (SfC) began training savings and lending groups in a handful of villages in Chalatenango, El Salvador. Today there are 2,183 “Ahorro Comunitario” (&ldquo…
FAO and CARE have jointly developed this paper to help policymakers and practitioners meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the ambitious goals of Agenda 2030. The paper is intende…
Partnering organizations Opportunity International and iDE have launched an innovative agricultural action-research project in Mozambique to sustainably deliver agricultural support to women f…
Jordan Vision 2025 and Jordan’s Economic Growth Plan acknowledge the significant spillover effects that improved transportation options and increased female labor participation would hav…
Around the world, women consistently earn less than men and are trapped in the lowest paid and least secure jobs, which rarely provide formal workplace protections or social security. They als…
Qualitative research conducted in August 2017, by South Florida University, examined the relationship between economic growth and forms of political accountability in four locations in Mali th…
This technical note examines the role of the enabling environment in supporting women agri-entrepreneurs and agricultural wage workers. It begins with an assessment of the entrepreneurial and…
The WE EMPOWER through responsible business conduct in G7 countries is a programme funded by the European Union (EU) and implemented by UN Women and the International Labour Organization (ILO)…
There is widespread recognition that unleashing women’s talent as entrepreneurs is an effective way to narrow the current gender gaps in the labor market, and thus contribute to inclusiv…
The concepts presented here are meant to help practitioners, researchers and donors design effective, measurable interventions to advance women economically. In developing these concepts, we h…
Women across the ASEAN region are confronted by regulations and policies restricting their labor force participation. These policies impact their ability to earn an income and have decision-ma…
2018 |Nisha Singh (The SEEP Network) and Anam Parvez Butt, Claudia Canepa (Oxfam)
Insights from a Practitioner Learning Group
This document is a summary of the process and insights from the participants of a 2017 Practitioner Learning Group (PLG) on “Shifting Social N…
2018 |Ariane Ryan, Amna Awan, Maryam Piracha, and Syeda Samira Saif (Market Development Facility)
This paper explores the effect of increased household income on women’s economic empowerment in the context of complex household dynamics, and seeks to understand how access to economic…
Women are confronted by regulations and policies restricting their labor force participation. These policies impact their ability to earn an income and have decision-making power, as well as i…
Research within the savings sector to date has produced mixed results on the impact of VSLA on women’s empowerment. This study examines if the more holistic approach to poverty alleviati…
The Gender Equality Mainstreaming (GEM) Framework is an approach that is presented here as a how-to manual – a practical guide and toolkit – for assessing gender equality, and iden…
The international community is increasingly aware of the negative impacts of child marriage on a wide range of development outcomes. Ending child marriage is nowpart of the Sustainable Develop…
The purpose of this study is to document changes in household decision-making among participants of BOMA’s gender-focused graduation model, specifically about household financial decisio…
Funded by the U.K. Department for International Development and the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), the Arab Women’s Enterprise Fund (AWEF) takes a unique approach to economic developme…
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