:: Strategy / Women and development ::
IV The Active Participation of Women in Economic Life and Development
In Lebanon , popular view of the role of women in the workforce differs from one region to another and varies from one social class to another.
In cities, due to economic necessity working women became a fait accompli, accepted by society. They are advancing within the banking and some other sectors faster than men. The problem begins at the management level where women are few. At the CEO level they are inexistent except in family owned businesses.
In rural areas and the less developed Lebanese regions, working women are accepted when they are unmarried or widowed. The overwhelming belief remains that the place of women is at home, taking care of their husbands and children.
When starting their own small businesses, Lebanese women are generally doing well. The gender issue is not pronounced. Women entrepreneurs are accepted by society. They get the backing of their families. Parents willingly help to guard the children when these women are away from home. The success stories are many.
The social acceptance of women entrepreneur can be attributed to a number of factors, the most important of which is the fact that most micro projects are homegrown and mostly home-based. This gives women the flexibility to be available for her family needs and thus fulfill her traditional role. Another factor is that self-employment in the minds of those who view women as vulnerable protects them from rubbing shoulders with men in authority positions and protects them from harassment.
Financial empowerment of women through micro projects may be acceptable to the reactionary circles for all the wrong reasons; however LCW considers that it is an opportunity that should not be ignored or taken lightly.
Objectives
Out of our belief that sustainable development cannot be achieved without the active participation of women in the economic life, one of our priorities is to continue providing women with the possibilities of vocational and professional training and encouraging the creation of micro projects where women can exercise their entrepreneurship potential.
This is being carried out by our member organizations who can better evaluate the needs of each region and or social group they are active within. Our role is to advise, coordinate and help to raise the necessary resources for such projects.
Plan of action
- Professional Training:
Member NGOs communicate to LCW the urgent needs and priorities of the regions where they are active. These requests usually vary from IT literacy workshop aiming at helping working women improve their job description to literacy programs. Also in demand is vocational training in subject as varied as hair dressing, nursing, tailoring, or cooking. Foreign language classes are also high on the priorities of our NGOs.
LCW groups the requests according to the services requested, checks its volunteer data banks to insure the technical expertise, designs the programs, provides the organizational system, and works on raising necessary funds.
This entails the formation of a task force that would be in charge of
- generating and distributing the necessary questionnaire and collecting information from member organizations
- updating our data bases and matching the requests with the available technical expertise
- seeking the help of specialized association to design and execute the training programs and workshops
- administratively coordinating the whole process
- make note of the problems faced and include them in a report evaluating the experience for the sake of better efficiency
- Entrepreneurship & self-employment:
Work on helping women to get involved in micro projects. This is carried out in cooperation with various international funds providing this service. The role of LCW is advisory, offering legal, administrative, and financial management services.
In order to provide the professional advice needed, LCW will proceed to form an advisory workgroup constituted of volunteer businesswomen and economist (from between members of our NGOs).
LCW will also study the possibility of organizing workshops and seminars that would address the promotion of entrepreneurial skills formation.
- Awareness:
Working on improving the social impression about working women by intensive use of seminars, media exposure, and publications- as previously proposed in the case of changing the stereotyping of women regarding political involvement.
LCW will try to get the endorsement of the Lebanese banking sector for this project. LCW could encourage banks to grant small loans to women by issuing female-friendly awards to those banks that endorse the project.
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