“NAWAD promotes women’s entrepreneurship knowledge and skills for improved livelihood through research, training, establishment of community women scholars, community based enterprises, policy advocacy planning and monitoring.”
Women are economically unequal to men by virtually every measure. Women are over-represented in precarious, informal and part-time work and are paid significantly less than men, simply because they are women. The gender pay gap continues to exist in every country in the world. As long as women’s economic empowerment lags behind men’s, gender equality will not be achieved.
Women also undertake the vast majority of care work in the home: looking after children, the elderly and the sick, fetching water and firewood, cleaning, cooking and washing clothes all of which deprive them of time and energy to pursue paid work and participate in decision-making. However, despite making such a vast contribution to our societies and economies, this care work is largely unrecognized, undervalued and uncounted.
When women have sustainable incomes they invest in their communities and families: buying or growing more and healthier food, investing in their family’s health care and medicine, and using their income to pay for their children’s education or training. Economically empowered women create healthier, more sustainable, and more equitable societies.