#IWD2022: Hon Hawau Muhammad Greets fellow women across. Says: if I'm chanced to represent EDU in KWHA, I'll maximize the potential of Rural women.

 

With the ever changing nature of technology, one cannot overlook the importance of internet to women entreprenuers.thanks to internet,the world has now become a global village making it easier for people from diverse locations meet up and share ideas on the internet.

Therefore,it is very vital that organisations and governments strive to make internet accessible to women entreprenuers to help them advertise their businesses,share ideas and add knowledge on how best to improve their businesses.

the govenment and NGOs should liase with ttelecommunication firms to help them implement this idea.Inteernet access enables innovativeness because with the new learnt knowwledge,a business woman is able to get new ideas on how to run her small farm,improve on her selling methods to attract more customers into her shop or practise new methods of firming to improve on the produce.

Many rural women globally, do not have internet access and training and this is a big impediment in their economic empowerment. 

We all should root for key stakeholders to help our small women entreprenuers get access to internet and also be trained on highly maximizing it for their benefit.

They can also advertise their goods,services and products to potential buyers across the globe. 

As many have mentioned, I see initiatives targeting youth and others within each of our communities and networks as being particularly important means to raise awareness of and promote women's economic empowerment (WEE). Just from looking through the Knowledge Circle and Twitter discussions that members have participated in, it's clear that we all hold extensive and valuable knowledge and perspectives on gender equality and women's empowerment - now it's a matter of disseminating our knowledge to encourage others to become passionate about such issues and promote them within their own circles.

In my view this can start from very simple things - e.g. bringing up existing gender disparities in the economic/social fields in relevant discussions, addressing factual information/data if someone states something inaccurate or something that reinforces harmful gender stereotypes, for instance regarding women's capacity in the workplace. Belinda-Rose and Elisa have brought up some fantastic examples of what can be done in our very own communities to scale up the promotion of WEE from individual conversations and discussions. The great thing is these are completely feasible and doable actions that almost anyone can take! Looking forward to more ideas in this discussion. 

I would suggest three methods to promote women economic empowerment:

1. I think governments can make deliberate efforts to engage women in entrepreneurship. If the government creates the enabling environment, a more people will be encouraged to venture out. I'll share two examples: The Federal government of Nigeria launched a youth empowerment program in which the government will give grants to youths to start businesses; a special edition was organized for women only. Another example is the fund for micro, small and medium enterprises and dedicated 60% of the funds for women and women groups. Some of the managers of these funds identified women groups and advocated to them to take advantage of the funds and this is gradually gaining momentum. Some women groups I work with called 100 women groups (100 is only symbolic) were selected for the funds and 16 out of 23 groups in Sokoto State Nigeria have received their funds. My team conducted trainings for them on simple accounting methods and financial management, to help them properly manage the loans and enable them pay back at the required time.  

2. Encourage and advocate for family and community support. This play's a major role to improving women's economic empowerment. As most women want to please their spouses and gain acceptance of the spouses family, it becomes a major hindrance for a women when she marries a person whose family values uphold women being sidelined or fully dependent on their spouses. This is very common in Africa and my home country Nigeria. This goes to show that men need to be involved (and completely sold out) to women economic empowerment, they need to join the campaign and even drive it. 

3. Create platforms for mentoring. Established women in the private and public sectors should mentor the younger ones. My friends and I are working on a network to encourage mentoring, younger women should be able to connect and learn from the established ones. 

All the things mentioned in the course of the conversation below are key - education, IT, economic opportunities etc However, my experience has taught me that the biggest hurdle for many girls and young women is self-confidence - the ability to believe in themselves and in the opportunities available to them. In my work running vocational and enterprise skills training programs for young girls, we struggled for many years to get students to fully engage with the courses and opportunities available to them. Eventually, we introduced a course at the beginning of their studies which was shaped around self-awareness, exploring values and building self-confidence This completely transformed their engagement with the training program. It was like the barriers had been removed - they were free to study because they finally believed in themselves and in the opportunities available to them. It is a reminder of something we have believed for a long time - that being empowered and equipped to make healthy, positive life choices is the biggest key to development and the ability of young women to not only work their way out of poverty, but to become agents of change within their families  and communities.