Growing Confidence Empowers Asian Women
Washington — More and more women in Asia, with increasing self-confidence, are starting businesses and entering politics, according to Sally Shelton-Colby, who heads a global coalition the seeks to advance women’s issues.
The recent growth in the number of microfinance institutions providing credit has helped women set up businesses, Shelton-Colby said at a recent meeting of South Asian and East Asian women leaders in New Delhi. She said these women business owners increasingly demand access to larger loans from larger financial institutions to expand their ventures. She said many of them also would benefit from additional business training.
Sufia, a Bangladeshi electrical repair technician, are opening businesses.
Shelton-Colby directs La Pietra Coalition and was one of several speakers at the meeting, which was hosted in September by Vital Voices, a U.S.-based nongovernmental organization, the U.S. State Department and corporate sponsors. La Pietra is an initiative of Vital Voices.
The event was scheduled to coincide with the 15-year anniversary of a United Nations conference on women in Beijing, which sought to work for legal and social changes to ensure that women and girls can contribute fully to their societies. At a U.N. meeting after that conference, 189 world leaders pledged to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment. They committed to achieve this and seven other objectives known as the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
At the September New Delhi meeting, more than 250 social workers, journalists, lawyers, government officials and business owners from 24 countries discussed the critical role women can play in South and East Asia’s economic, political and social growth.
Following the meeting, Beth Brooke, a U.S.-based executive with the global business consulting company Ernst & Young, said that while Asian women have more access to credit, progress is too slow. She called on governments to fully enact gender equality in their business laws.
But Brooke also said Asian women are making greater progress than men in learning English. Language skills enable them to work in call centers more effectively than men, she said. (Call centers are centralized offices where workers field consumer assistance calls and make sales calls for multinational or local companies.)
Unlike Brooke, Shelton-Colby sees “momentum behind gender and women’s rights now.” She cites an increasing amount of research from organizations like the World Bank that links women’s rights to economic growth as a factor in this momentum.
Beth Brooke
During the New Delhi meeting, Vital Voices posted some of the speakers’ comments on its blog. Jaspal Bindra, chief executive of Standard Chartered Bank in Asia, is quoted as saying that his industry is experiencing “a huge revolution” by customizing loan services for startup women entrepreneurs who have little access to other forms of credit. “We are trying to create a mindset which is more favorable to women — a mindset which sees women’s future potential,” he said.
Brooke cited Ernst & Young’s program for entrepreneurial women and a program by the global banking and securities company Goldman Sachs to help women. And she said that technology is helping women connect with each other to network and share ideas and experiences. As more women enter the business sector, they become encouraging mentors for other women.
ASIAN WOMEN IN POLITICS
In Asia and elsewhere, some governments are enacting laws requiring that set numbers of elected and appointed officials be women.
In India, according to Shelton-Colby, the national parliament passed a law requiring that around 30 percent of seats on municipal councils, or panchayats, be reserved for women.
Women officeholders are focusing on bringing potable water, irrigation, better schools and efficient garbage disposal systems to local areas in India, according to Shelton-Colby.
“Around the world, women are blazing new trails and triumphing over long-entrenched obstacles to women’s progress in order to create a better world. Despite a solid record of advances, our work is by no means done,” Melanne Verveer, U.S. ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues, said in New Delhi.
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