CIDA and Women's Economic Empowerment: Emmeline Verzosa

Transcript

"With the assistance of CIDA, the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women [now the Philippine Commission on Women] became known in the region as the pioneer in gender mainstreaming. We attribute that to CIDA's assistance. A lot of countries, a lot of national women's machineries from the region would come to the office and ask for study visits. So we would share the tools and the experience we had in influencing the bureaucracy, in influencing other government agencies on the promotion of gender equality and women's empowerment, and why that is important. We've also have been able to influence the legislature by the kinds of laws that have been enacted."

These new laws include:

Women in Development and Nation Building Act 1992
Gender Budget Policy 1995
Anti-Rape Law 1997
Anti-Sexual Harrassment Act
Anti-Trafficking Law 2003
Anti-Violence against Women and their Children Act 2004
Magna Carta of Women 2009

"Why are women still poor? So what's the magic formula to make sure that there is genuine women's economic empowerment happening at the local level? We also saw that there were a lot of programs being offered by different government agencies: Trade and Industry would have its program, Labour and Employment would have its program, Science and Tech would have its program, all focusing on economic empowerment. But why are we still poor? So we thought that it would be important to bring all these players of economic empowerment together, into a convergence effort, and that's how the GREAT Women Project was born."

GREAT = Gender Responsive Economic Actions for the Transformation of Women

GREAT Women project works with national, provincial and local governments/agencies in 7 provinces and 36 municipalities to:

• develop co-ordinated laws, policies, programs and services that support women microentrepreneurs
• increase access to information, credit, loans, training, new technologies and markets

"Going to the field and listening to the women microenterprises themselves, they would say that 'Oh, it is only now that I have been invited to planning sessions by my local government unit. They are listening to us. They now know what we actually need. And it's not just programs coming from the top and being fed down to us. We are participants, active participants actually, to shaping what is important for my own community and for my own locality'. That is what they would say."

CIDA is investing in women's economic leadership for tomorrow, helping to build the foundations for women's economic empowerment and supporting women entrepreneurs.