Women Setting the Economic Policy Agenda

June 7, 2010 — More than 100 leaders from Cameroon, Egypt, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea and the United States joined CEDPA at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on June 3 to discuss strategies to increase women’s participation in the economies of their nations.

The summit on “Women Setting the Economic Policy Agenda” examined legal, policy and regulatory barriers that impede women’s full participation in the economic sector, and prioritized areas for future advocacy. It was sponsored by the ExxonMobil Foundation's Women's Economic Opportunity Initiative.

The gathering included 25 women leaders who joined CEDPA for a three-week program to develop advocacy strategies for women’s economic empowerment within their countries. They were joined by economic experts such as Maria Otero, Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs in the United States and a pioneering leader in the area of microfinance, and representatives from the International Finance Corporation, U.S. Agency for International Development, Ashoka, Financial Services Volunteer Corps, World Bank and others.

Under Secretary Otero spoke about her early work in providing financing to enable women to start small businesses in developing countries. “I’ll never forget one of the first clients that I met in the early 1980s. She was an onion vendor in a market...she looked at us incredulously [and] said ‘Do you mean to tell me you are going to lend my $150 just because I say that I will pay it back?”

From these small beginnings, “microfinance has grown and it’s grown from making small loans…to developing a wide array of financial services for the poor,” Under Secretary Otero said.

Institutions including the World Bank have documented how increasing women’s educational attainment and promoting their equal opportunity in the labor force and public life can reduce poverty and promote national growth.

“This way of approaching women in particular, creates a great deal of change in the way that they perceive themselves, the way in which their communities perceive them and the way in which their societies perceive them,” Otero said. “Their children have better education, they are closer to having health care, and it is especially evident in the lives of so many women that I’ve met through my work.”

Other speakers included Lorie Jackson, Director of the ExxonMobil Foundation’s Women’s Economic Opportunity Initiative; Nse Udoh, Executive Director of the Community Partners for Development in Nigeria; and Alma Kassymova, Country Director for the USAID/PRAGMA Kazakhstan Small Business Development Project.

Nse Udoh spoke about the challenges in Nigeria and strategies to overcome them. “Some of the policies, cultural, legal and regulatory barriers in Nigeria include laws and customs preventing ownership of property for women. This makes it impossible for them to access credit facilities in the commercial banks and finance houses, since they have nothing to place as collateral,” Nse said.

Alma Kasimova noted that “the most critical challenge [in Kazakhstan] is that women in the most remote and rural parts desperately need their business skills and knowledge developed to be able to get access to social, political and economic infrastructure as well as benefit from the funding available.”

Both Nse and Alma were part of the CEDPA training, and are spending their remaining time in Washington, D.C. to develop specific advocacy plans to overcome these barriers.

Under Secretary Otero applauded their efforts. “Whether we are promoting better regulation for financial inclusion, whether it is increasing access to health or helping design remote educational tools, the empowerment of women is at the core of what we are trying to do,” said Undersecretary Otero.

Find out more about CEDPA’s training programs.

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