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Economic Empowerment for Women
During the last six decades, and within the system of Human Rights, there have been important developments in concerning the women rights. Where there have been interest all over the world in the issues of women that resulted in achieving a better situation of women. This development can be monitored chronologically from the 1950s and 1960s until the moment.
Within the mentioned decades the interest in women situation and suffrage was gradually took a better status, but the 1970s had witnessed an increase of the recognition with women role in the process of development, where the interest was begun with the concentration on the political and productive role of women, what was reflected on practicing several efforts fulfilled on different criteria,
the most important of which are:
1- deciding the negative effects of the structural readjustment on women and calling for treating those effects and reinforcing the positive ones.
2- creating the possibilities of comprising between women family and work responsibilities and participating her in the process of decision making.
3- empowering women through training and giving loans.
In this respect it worthy mentioning that the NGOs all over the world have played a significant pioneer role and made crucial efforts in activating all what are related to women of rights and freedoms.
The efforts that increased the importance of the civil society system in supporting women, not only in providing different kinds of assistance, whether the legal, social or health, but also in concerning the creating of the essential basics for dependence of women and giving her the opportunity to practice the role of the producer and responsible in the society.
In this context, the experiment of the Center for the Egyptian Women Legal Assistance (CEWLA) can be taken as a representative model, where it has being approached several ways and practical methods in assisting women and in creating the real factors for empowerment on the legal and social levels in order to enable her to call for her rights and practicing what she enjoys of freedoms brought in the Egyptian constitution and the international covenants for the rights of women.
CEWLA has achieved several activities and practical contributions that reflected on women, particularly in the geographic areas are covered directly by CEWLA.
Now, on the basis of the current status of CEWAL among the target people, it seeks for completing this approach through supporting the activities already made on the legal and social levels in order to empower women on the economic level.
Reasons, ambitions and various factors motivated the CEWLA to adopt this project, this what we try to explain it in details in the following parts of the proposal.
The importance of the project:
Perhaps the first question can be raised on the background of this project is: why the economic empowerment is important and what are the factors made CEWLA to adopt this project?
The answer is that there are many reasons made this question to be raised for the first time among the workers and activists of CEWLA but not as it posed above, on the contrary it was posed as this: why we are not interested in activating the factors that can lead to the economic empowerment of women? The question was developed as a result of the real experiment that experienced with the target women with who the center used to work.
In fact, the experience of CEWLA with women, particularly in the geographic areas we used to work in has significantly contoured the determination of proprieties of work and choosing the appropriate activities that should be done with them in order to achieve the expected goals. The thing that made CWELA to set a group of activities that can reinforce the active interaction with both women and children in the areas covered by the center that extended recently to include several provinces represent the main geographic areas of Egypt.
The idea of project on the operational level has been developed as a reflection of the needs assessment of women particularly in the target areas, the dimension we can explain in the following:
| Variable |
Males % |
Females % |
| Illetracy |
51% |
49% |
| Drop out rate |
37% |
63% |
| Unemployment |
49% |
51% |
| Without income |
40% |
60% |
| abandoned |
-- |
5% |
| Divorced |
-- |
9% |
| widowed |
-- |
86% |
| Age group 10-18 |
47% |
53% |
| Female headed households |
-- |
29.3% |
The project :
CEWLA has recently adopted a policy to advocate the link between the human rights and development amongst the Egyptian community and civil society institutions it is working with. The center aims to show that a major factor of supporting human rights amongst the poor local communities shall be based on their access to social and economic rights, for the society as a whole and for women in particular.
In light of the current economic crisis endured by the society, it was clear that women are more affected. The project has thus focused on empowering women economically.
General Objective:
Liberation of women from the wrongful clichés and the effects of the social heritage, that is obstructing women advancement and economic empowerment.
Specific Objectives:
1- Provide literacy education to 200 women.
2- Provide technological training for 240 women having mid-education certifications.
3- Health and environmental health awareness programs.
4- Legal awareness program.
5- Assistance to issue civil documents from women who do not have official documents (ID, birth certificate, etc…).
6- Technical and vocational training for women on necessary skills to run micro business.
7- Provide assistance to enable women to obtain small loans from donors associations.
Target Groups:
a- 200 illiterate women
b- 240 women carrying mid-education certificates
Implementation Steps:
1- Preparation of illiteracy classes.
2- Preparation of lists of target groups participating women.
3- Preparation of training premises.
4- Preparation of a field research on the importance of the economic empowerment, particularly those were exposed to violations of the level of personal status.
5- Issuing a study on the role of economic and social development on evolution of democratic and human rights culture in the society.
Output and results of the project:
1- Qualification of 200 women as a focal point to disseminate awareness amongst the other women of the local community and to combat wrongful stereotypes and harmful practices, be it legal, health, environmental or other issues affecting the local community.
2- Assist more than 300 women in setting up their own micro-projects.
3- Establish a network amongst governmental and non-governmental associations providing different services for the target group women, be it provision of financial resources, technical or educational services.
4- Empower CEWLA's ability in undertaking such projects tackling women economic empowerment, which will complement its other services rendered successfully to the local community and to women in particular.
Funded by : Global Fund for Women
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