Women & Entrepreneurism
Investing in Women & Girls – Step One: 3/8/11
by Emily Drew, BCLC Researcher and Writer
If you were a woman in rural Benin today, you would spend 10 hours each week carrying food and water. As a Tanzania Masaai woman, you would walk up to 30 kilometers to collect water in the dry season and, of course, walk back with your liquid burden.
“Women’s time poverty and income poverty often reinforce each other with negative impacts,” the World Bank reports. A woman’s time in the formal economy—getting an education, holding a job, starting her own business, or cultivating surplus agriculture—means less time she can spend on household duties. In most places today, women and girls simply don’t have an option of how to spend their time. If they don’t get water, they go thirsty, and if they don’t get firewood, they don’t eat.
The Business Civic Leadership Center is a 501(c)3 affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It is the business community’s voice and resource for social and philanthropic interests. The annual Global Corporate Citizenship Conference exists to promote opportunities for companies of all sizes, all types, to partner with governments and NGOs to advance human and economic progress.
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