Snapshot of Women’s Economic Empowerment Activities | Sept. 2019-Dec 2020 Brought to you by USAID Data Services

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SNAPSHOT OF SNAPSHOT OF WOMEN’S ECONOMIC WOMEN’S ECONOMIC

EMPOWERMENT EMPOWERMENT ACTIVITIES ACTIVITIES

September 2019-December 2020September 2019-December 2020

61%

58%55%

55%13%

61%

Local NGO

International NGO

Local Private Sector

Company

Host Government

Multi/BilateralDonor

Multi-National

Corporation

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has a long-standing commitment to women’s economic empowerment and gender equality through thoughtful and innovative programming. With resources from the former Women’s Global Development and Prosperity (W-GDP) Fund at USAID, the Agency is implementing 78 activities in more than 60 countries, partnering with 470 private sector, non-governmental and local organizations, as well as host country governments, to advance women’s economic empowerment globally. Through December 2020, roughly half of these activities reached 181,543 women (see Figure 1). These women often benefited from multiple economic empowerment interventions, such as access to markets, business training, loans, and more. This report showcases a snapshot of these activities, as the Agency continues to build on successes and lessons learned.

USAID’s Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Hub (GenDev) continues to support activities that empower women to prosper in the workforce and succeed as entrepreneurs, and that address discriminatory laws, improve employer practices, and change harmful gender norms. This work breaks barriers across sectors, such as health, gender-based violence (GBV) including sexual harassment, lack of childcare, and other critical areas integral to advancing gender equality and women’s economic empowerment.

USAID uses a three-pronged approach to advance women’s economic empowerment in every region where we work and is well-positioned to lead the larger development community in creating opportunities for women to participate in the economy on an equal basis with men. First, we manage funding and ensure that we have optimal outcomes and results, and that investments are efficient and effective. Second, as a team of technical experts, we work relentlessly to identify the most promising proposals for accelerating women’s economic empowerment, provide initial funding to pilot these approaches, and then bring the best performers to scale. Third, we leverage our extensive field presence to advance women’s economic empowerment and gender equality globally.

FIGURE 2: PERCENT OF ACTIVITIES BY PARTNER CATEGORY

FIGURE 3: PERCENT OF ACTIVITIES BY PILLARS

FIGURE 1: WOMEN REACHED BY REGIONOVERVIEW

AsiaMulti-region Latin America and Caribbean

Sub-Saharan Africa

64.6K

51.7K

48.4K

11.6K

4.1K

Europe and Eurasia

Note: Data presented in the graphs above are sourced by 61 of the 78 activities responding to surveys.

Snapshot of Women’s Economic Empowerment Activities | Sept. 2019-Dec 2020 Brought to you by USAID Data Services

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Women Prospering in the WorkforceAdvancing workforce development and vocational education to ensure women have the skills and training necessary to secure jobs

Women Succeeding as EntrepreneursPromoting women’s entrepreneurship and providing women with access to capital, markets, technical assistance, and networks

Women Enabled in the EconomyStriving to remove the legal, regulatory, and cultural barriers that constrain women from being able to fully and freely participate in the economy

ColombiaCosta RicaDominican RepublicGuatemalaHondurasMexicoParaguayPeruMIDDLE EASTLebanonJordanMorocco Tunisia

EUROPE AND EURASIAArmeniaAzerbaijanGeorgiaKazakhstanKosovoKyrgyz RepublicMoldovaMontenegroNorth MacedoniaLATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEANBrazilChile

ASIABangladeshCambodiaFijiIndiaIndonesia NepalPakistanPapua New Guinea PhilippinesSolomon IslandsSri LankaThailandVietnam

MadagascarMaliMozambiqueNamibiaNiger NigeriaRwandaSenegalSouth AfricaTanzaniaUgandaZambia

AFRICAAngolaBurundiBenin Cote d’IvoireEswatiniEthiopiaGhanaGuineaKenyaLesothoLiberiaMalawi

COUNTRY LOCATIONS

PILLAR 1 PILLAR 2 PILLAR 3

Snapshot of Women’s Economic Empowerment Activities | Sept. 2019-Dec 2020 Brought to you by USAID Data Services

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PROGRAMMING HIGHLIGHTS

PILLAR 1 Providing core-skills training (e.g., leadership, teamwork, communication, and time management)

Improving work conditions for female workers (increasing safety and wellness, preventing and responding to GBV, making workspaces healthier, and providing services, like meals, transportation and childcare)

Enabling women to secure and retain supervisory and management positions

Enabling job promotions and/or higher wages/salaries for female workers

PILLAR 2 Providing business/entrepreneurship training

Connecting women with markets and other business opportunities

Increasing women’s access to credit and capital

Increasing women’s ability to save and invest

PILLAR 3 Supporting the drafting of national or sub-national policies, laws, regulations and government plans to enable women’s economic empowerment

Transforming harmful gender norms with change agents (e.g., traditional leaders, male champions, policymakers, legislators, government officials, journalists, judicial personnel)

Removing restrictions on women’s employment

Integrating GBV prevention and response into economic empowerment programming

FREQUENTLY REPORTED ACTIVITY INTERVENTIONS

CHALLENGES

SUCCESSES

• COVID-19 has caused risks and obstacles such as implementation delays, staff deaths and turnover, loss of funding, travel restrictions, and reduction in beneficiary participation. Some activity plans need to be revised and some programming has been transitioned to virtual platforms or to small group sessions.

• Activities faced unexpected delays in aligning with partner priorities, getting timely feedback, and achieving consensus among important activity stakeholders such as USAID Missions, Regional Bureaus, and host country government authorities.

• Weak internet connectivity obstructed individuals and facilitators from participating in virtual programming. Some participants do not have internet access at all, while other participants only have intermittent and spotty access.

• Hurricane Eta and Hurricane Iota devastated communities and disrupted activity programming in Honduras and Guatemala

ENGENDERING UTILITIES - Gender equitable personnel actions are transforming male-dominated industries• 57 employer policies advancing gender equality were created by private and public utilities companies partnering with USAID between 2017-

2020.• 6,105 female employees received training, of which 995 women were promoted into leadership or technical roles.

WOMENCONNECT CHALLENGE - Cutting-edge online tools are enabling more women to hone their business skills and access labor or commodity markets• 3,270 women agricultural entrepreneurs in Senegal were connected with microfinance institutions, farmer organizations, and local radio

stations by registering in locally managed databases.• 5,078 women dairy farmers in Bangladesh were registered in the i2i app, which will enable women dairy farmers to transact transparently

with Milk Collection Centers and get more money into their hands.

GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE (GBV) - Combating GBV enables women to participate freely in the economy• USAID and the Levi Strauss & Co. are partnering in Lesotho to empower trade union leaders to speak out against GBV and provide

resources for survivors. A toll-free number enables apparel workers to report GBV, including harassment, and workers’ associational rights are being protected. The project hired key staff for the independent Worker Rights Watch that will administer the information line and investigate allegations. A team of facilitators are conducting anti-GBV education and awareness raising workshops in the factories.

• The Benin Integrated Health Services Activity provided in-kind resources for starting up small businesses to more than 100 GBV survivors. The survivors received business training, reintegration support, and supervision visits. Income-generating activities help GBV survivors to overcome stigma and reintegrate into their communities, leadership positions, or jobs.

Snapshot of Women’s Economic Empowerment Activities | Sept. 2019-Dec 2020 Brought to you by USAID Data Services

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CASE STUDY - USAID AND PEPSICO PILOT PROGRAM MAKES THE BUSINESS CASE FOR WOMEN’S ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT

RESOURCES

In West Bengal, India, women are rarely seen as farmers, even though they typically spend as much time as their husbands working on the farm: preparing fields, planting seeds, harvesting crops, and managing animals. Ownership and control over assets generating income are central to women’s economic and social empowerment and their ability to contribute to their communities and countries. For many women, the most valuable of these assets are the land and natural resources they depend on to make a living, provide for their families, and invest in their communities. USAID is partnering with PepsiCo to demonstrate that empowering women in their potato supply chains and meaningfully including them in PepsiCo’s efforts to increase sustainable farming practices in West Bengal, India makes good business sense.

“We knew almost nothing except cutting seeds. Now we have learned everything about farming. Additionally, we have learned about dealing with people like tractor operators, landowners, and how to do accounting.”– Anwara Begam, program participant

Following intensive training including bootcamps, 83 percent of Laboratoria’s participants, all of whom are women, are employed in high-quality tech jobs, doubling their incomes during the pandemic. The program also expanded successfully into Colombia and in Brazil, where 100 percent of the women who participated were placed in jobs.

The Women Prospering in Technology activity implemented by Laboratoria equips women with skills needed for placement in the high tech sectors in Colombia, Mexico, Chile, Brazil and Peru. Click here or the image to the right to view the video.

BOOTCAMPS AND JOB PLACEMENT

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To bring women into the PepsiCo supply chain, USAID and PepsiCo partnered with several women’s self-help groups to negotiate land leases and increase their agronomic knowledge on how to effectively grow PepsiCo potatoes. This was the first time many of these women had ever accessed farmland on their own or participated in agricultural extension. Participants learned new potato farming skills, such as seed treatment, soil health, and pest and disease control, as well as financial literacy and leadership training.

In the first year, 500 women in 48 women’s groups were trained in potato agronomy, women were hired as field agronomists for the first time, and offered technical field support to farming families, which not only supported the farming households, but increased community acknowledgement that women can be a respected and valuable source of agronomy knowledge.

REAL IMPACT - WOMEN PROSPERING IN TECHNOLOGY