Gender Inequality : Social Justice

Gender equality is first a matter of social justice, allowing equal access to rights, resources and opportunities, but it also makes our societies richer and more secure. In other words, gender equality is a condition of development, and a matter of sustainable peace and security. So it is first a matter of principles – women are empowered, the benefits are perceived by the entire community.

 These are the specific problems that i wish to address:

1. Unequal pay

 For decades, women have earned more bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees, and doctorate degrees than men. Yet women in the U.S. workforce still earn less than their male counterparts. How much less?

2. Sexual harassment

An obstacle that many women face in the workforce is sexual harassment. While the #MeToo movement has helped to shed light on the issue, little had been known, until now, about how many women are subjected to this type of mistreatment.

3. Racism

Unfortunately, race seems to play a major role in how women are treated and compensated in the workplace. The pay a woman receives may vary depending on her race and ethnicity. 

4. Women are promoted less often than men

Despite being more educated than men and constituting nearly half of the workforce, women are promoted at work far less often than men.

5. Fear of asking to be paid what you’re worth

 While related to the issue of unequal pay, fear of discussing money is a separate issue that affects women more significantly than men. .

Here are a few solutions that can be achievable:

• Setting up a specific salary range per band or position for everyone within the organization  so that there is a balance of equal pay salaries amongst men and women.
• Each job description should be designed and aligned in such a way  that women roles are not excluded in terms of performance management and distribution of resources in a working force environment.
• Switching off around the time and day of the week by networking events so that everyone can attend. This way, women who may be responsible for their family after hours, can also attend and benefit from strategic networking.

This kind of solution serves to enhance the rights of women in any working environment as the same has proved that women have not been given the necessary attention when it comes to gender sensitivity. Gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world.  There has been progress over the last decades: , fewer girls are forced into early marriage.

The effects of  the COVID 19 pandemic could reverse the limited progress that has been made on gender equality and women’s rights.  The coronavirus outbreak exacerbates existing inequalities for women and girls across every sphere – from health and the economy, to security and social protection. 

Women play a disproportionate role in responding to the virus, including as frontline healthcare workers and careers at home. Women’s unpaid care work has increased significantly as a result of school closures and the increased needs of older people.

The pandemic has also led to a steep increase in  violence against women and girls. With lockdown measures in place, many women are trapped at home with their abusers, struggling to access services that are suffering from cuts and restrictions. 

1. A need to  educating leaders on the case for greater female participation, and challenge gender bias, stereotypes and traditional views. 

2.A need to reframe the way we think about women and working and stop placing limitations on their desires and abilities to pursue ambitious, successful careers.

3.  Businesses should adopt more innovative parental leave models that encourage active fathering and tackle the stigma of parental leave, to support both men and women to care for children. 

4. Businesses can help women access affordable quality child care – in many countries this is the difference between women working, or not.

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First, leaders should recognize that the “always on, always available” expectation for success is a leading cause of gender inequality. Organizations that evolve away from an “always on, always available” culture may even improve business results beyond delivering diversity and inclusion benefits. 

Second, business leaders should reflect on their own behaviors to understand the expectations they are setting for what success looks like and how to achieve it.

Third, business leaders and organizations can take action to start breaking down the barriers to change and building more gender equality.

• Offer personalized coaching to all individuals. Help people navigate difficult decisions at work and give people autonomy.
• Build learning and development programs around life goals, not just professional aspirations.
• Audit the informal behaviors that lead to success. Perform a gap analysis to see if these informal behaviors align with the formal measures written in performance evaluations.

Innovation, Creativity and the Gender Gap

Societies all around the world have benefited from the work of women inventors, designers and artists. But data show that fewer women than men use the intellectual property system. That gender gap matters for a number of reasons, perhaps most importantly because gender equality is a human right and because we are all better off when women and girls are empowered to make their full contribution to innovation and creativity.

Gender inequality remains a major global issue. Women continue to be less likely to go to school than men, still earn less than men, and still are more susceptible to physical violence and abuse.

How can we better harness social innovation ideas and methods to advance gender equality—and vice versa?

Our research examined three dimensions of gender inequality—resources, attitudes, and power—and while we found some points of positive progress (such as the increasing number of female parliamentarians), there were many points of sticky inequality.

In terms of resources, for example, we found:

• Unequal opportunities and pay for women in relation to paid work. In the UK, the gender pay gap is currently 19 percent, and some 27 percent of women (compared to 16 percent of men) earn less than the living wage.
• An unequal balance of responsibility for and time spent on unpaid work. 

In terms of attitudes we found:

• Ongoing high levels of violence and abuse predominantly perpetrated by men against women. A staggering 1.4 million women in the UK experience domestic abuse each year.

In terms of power we found:

• Despite some progress, ongoing under-representation of women in positions of authority and influence across the political, business, and social spheres. For example, 29 percent of elected members of the UK parliament and just 23.5 percent of FTSE100 board members are women.

Gender and Social Innovation

We also looked at the gender-related social innovation work of a variety of practitioners, intermediary support organizations, and funders. Reviewing projects that meld social innovation with a gender equality perspective, we found some exciting examples. These projects draw on a nuanced, feminist understanding of how gender inequality works—recognizing that attitudes, power, and resources link together to create and sustain inequality. Each of them channels this into practical vehicles (such as workshops, materials, or mentoring plans) that have the capacity to reach broad audiences and address the roots of inequality.

Despite these green shoots, there are clear gaps to fill. For example, much work to date has focused on increasing support for women entrepreneurs and innovators. This in itself helps boost equality, but it won’t necessarily deliver innovation that addresses gender inequality; all innovations developed by women don’t address gender inequality, and it is now widely recognized that accelerating gender equality will require innovation that addresses and engages both women and men.

We also carried out interviews with UK social finance providers to assess how much they understood and considered gender in their funding decisions. Although participants showed interest in discussing the topic, many didn’t feel confident about addressing gender equality; they neither considered gender equality in decision-making nor measured it in their reporting, there is a lack of support for many grassroots organizations that are already innovating in funding for gender equality and women’s rights work.

The Theory of Change assumes that empowering women is both the means and the end: focusing on the rights of, and being accountable to, women and girls is the most effective way of tackling gender inequality as the root cause of violence against women and girls.

What Needs to Happen

Gender innovation means innovations specifically targeted at addressing the roots of gender inequality. Where is this already happening? How can we develop and support more of these? Gendering innovation means attending to the gendered nature of existing social innovation practice, support, and funding. How does this currently help or hinder gender equality? How could we improve?

Both nationally and internationally, we need more:

• Ways of talking about gender innovation that engage both gender equality workers and projects, and the broader community of social innovation practitioners, intermediaries, and funders. Language differences can mask common goals and approaches to gender equality and social innovation. Some gender equality organizations we met with during our research, for instance, were unfamiliar with the terms “social innovation” and “social finance,” and some social innovation intermediaries did not understand how “gender” was relevant to their work. Accessible texts, guides, videos, and workshops can bridge the communication gap. The Criterion Institute, for example, has been developing a toolkit to specifically work through this in the context of social finance.
• Spaces and support to enable the different actors—funders, intermediaries, social innovation and gender equality organizations—to reach out and connect with the unusual suspects (including organizations that may not consider their work as social innovation), and to challenge old ones. Whether physical or virtual, we need to create and promote opportunities for these groups to come together for both sides to benefit. For example, funders and intermediaries with the resources to host smaller organizations could develop workshops, forums, or “un-conferences” to help harness the creativity of unusual juxtapositions.
• The social innovation community needs to more consistently recognize the innovation that takes place within the gender equality sector.s..

Gender equality and social innovation actors are both known for their reflexivity–to critique and refine their own working. Both sides stand to gain from acknowledging each other, communicating, and collaborating.

Bringing together the techniques of social innovation and new insights on gender offers a potent way to address long-standing inequality. There is learning and development on offer for all parties in doing so. Social innovation that doesn’t understand how gender shapes all areas of life won’t achieve it’s full potential. Similarly, gender equality actors can learn from the exciting conjunctions, processes, and tools of social innovation to accelerate their vision for equality. The work of drawing the two together has already begun and is picking up speed; now is the time to make sure this work is linked together to make gender innovation mainstream.

THE CURRENT PANDEMIC DISEASE OF COVID 19 VIRUS, LACK OF FUNDS AND NETWORKING AMONGST MEMBERS.

The story you consistently tell yourself is among the most important actions you can take towards achievement.  I am a firm believer that can’t is among the most dangerous words in the English language. When tell yourself that you can’t do something you are disabling all of your brain’s creative and problem-solving abilities.

You are telling your mind that you lack the ability to solve the problem you’re currently facing.  That’s a pretty big barrier to overcome. Can’t is best replaced with “I need to learn how”.I once worked with an individual who was morbidly obese. This person’s doctor had told them that they needed to make changes, or else they were going to start experiencing serious medical issues. Of course, this individual had already “tried everything” to lose weight without success. With me, we first explored what it meant to “be healthy,” as this means different things to different people. One of the first topics discussed was drinking water, which was not present at all in this individual’s life. 

 I have noticed that many people have goals to lose weight, stop smoking, work out, get a job, etc., but don’t actually want to do these things. Not really. They feel pressures from society, parents, doctors, etc., and go through the motions of making changes, but that doesn’t mean they actually want that for themselves. As you can imagine, this presents a huge barrier to progress. It is important to do some self-reflection in order to uncover your motivations for setting goals; if it is externally motivated (i.e. just because others want you to), it is going to be much more difficult to be successful. All too often, we allow the opinions or perceptions of others to make decisions for us. When this happens, it is easy to get stuck in a cycle of feeling like a failure in their eyes, which decreases self-esteem and motivation. Make sure that your goals are your own, and that you know why you are working toward those specific goals. No one else has to live your life – just you!

In conclusion, there are many people who have been using SMART goals, and still have difficulty achieving them. Your goals may be too big to start with, and some self-reflection may be required to make sure that deep down, this is your goal, and not someone else’s goal for you.

USE OF ONLINE INTERACTION AND SOCIAL MEDIA

ENAHANCEMENT IN NETWORKING PROGRAMMES

ZOOM CONFERENCES

SOCIAL MEDIA INTERACTIONS

Setting a goal that we knew for sure they could achieve was crucial. Guess what happened? Not only did this person meet their goal, they actually surpassed the goal by taking some sips of the water throughout the week. This individual was feeling great, confident, motivated, and eagerly wanted to increase the goal for the next week. This is the mindset we need to be in, if we want to change our habits for the better.Instead of jumping to a goal of drinking 8 (or more) glasses of water per day, we set a small, SMART goal that this person was sure they could accomplish. 

NO OF PEOPLE THAT ARE NOT EMPLOYED IN THE PERI URBAN  AREAS

NO OF WOMEN WHO HAVE BEEN SEXUALLY HARRASSED AT WORKING PLACES

NO OF GIRLS AND WOMEN WHO HAVE BEEN FORCED TO EARLY MARRIAGES

NO OF WOMEN WHO HAVE BEEN PROMOTED IN WORKING PLACES

NON GOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATION FOR WOMEN

NOCAD

DUE TO VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND AN UNEQUAL RESPONSIBILITIES ESCALATING IN THE COUNTRY

NON GOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATION

Within the workplace, there is a stark difference in the way male and female employees see their careers progressing. Among employees aged 25 or younger, a recent study showed a double-digit lead among men over women who were asked whether they had a favorable impression of their career opportunities.

In addition to not seeing career opportunities as optimistically as their male colleagues, the same study showed that women in this age group were less engaged in their work (53 percent of women, compared with 58 percent of men).

Also, during their first two years of employment, female employees’ perceptions of having influence, autonomy, and a sense of accomplishment all drop at twice the rate seen among their male counterparts.

DESSEMINATIO OF INFORMATION THROUGH STRATEGIC CAMPAIGNS, ORGANISING CULTURAL DANCES AND DINNER DANCES

DINNER DANCES

CULTURAL DANCES

EVENTS

CAMPAIGNS

LOANS

ENGAGING WITH ALL LEVELS OF PEOPLE

USD 120,000

Sufficient working capital is a key aspect of our organisation’s financial health, and not having enough working capital has had a serious impact on the future of our organisation. We have applied for this funding from Reimagining Pathways to create enough working capital to enable us fulfil our growth ambitions.

We want to  grow our orgnisation to the  next level,  and this requires Reimagining Pathways funding that enables us to execute our plans and objectives in our organisation.

We also want to expand our organisation by opening many outlets across the world and we feel Reimagining Pathways will come on board. 

 Our organisation needs daily running costs to be  covered, so external funding is a solution we need to grow. 

TO ENHANCE THE OBJECT AND GOALS OF THE ORGNISATION, A NEED TO HAVE A DIVERSE KNOWLEDGE OF THE ESSENCE OF EACH ORGANISATION FOR PARTNERSHIP PURPOSES

UNICEF through child protection programmmes and human rights education