Women want a hand up, not hand-outs

I recently had the honour of meeting Lilian, a beverage distributor from Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, and her 12 year-old daughter, Angel. In the short time spent with them, I found in Lilian one of the most ambitious, hard-working women I had ever met. Her love for her daughter is a driving force in her life, along with her desire to raise Angel to be a successful, empowered woman.

Lilian is not alone in this. Women worldwide invest 90% of their income in their families and communities. Those are great investments. According to the World Bank, increasing the income of women in emerging economies accelerates community development and leads to better child survival rates, nutrition and education.

While women do two-thirds of the world’s work, they earn only 10% of the world’s income, depriving families of the resources they need to break the cycle of poverty and lift up their kids to a better life.

Women who live that statistic face so many challenges. Take water – the World Health Organization reports that among families without a source of drinking water, women are disproportionately responsible for water collection. Globally, women spend an estimated 200 million hours every day simply collecting water. That is a gender gap. To provide safe water to those families is a simple and straightforward way to close that gap, freeing women for more meaningful and productive work.

Entrepreneurship is another important way women can boost their incomes. Unfortunately, Lilian and women entrepreneurs around the world like her face real obstacles in starting and growing their businesses; obstacles that are often different from those facing men. My own company has spent a lot of time trying to understand those obstacles and supporting women entrepreneurs in overcoming them through its 5by20 initiative. Launched in 2010, 5by20 is The Coca-Cola Company’s global commitment to enable the economic empowerment of 5 million women entrepreneurs across the company’s value chain by 2020.

We learned some important lessons.

When designing an approach to empowerment, understanding the barriers women face is critical. Research indicates there are three prominent challenges women entrepreneurs must overcome when starting and developing businesses, all stemming from a lack of access to 1) business skills training, 2) finance, to start and develop their businesses, and 3) the mentor and peer networks all need for support, learning and discovering new market opportunities.

How can we all help women entrepreneurs close the gap and succeed? The answer lies in partnership. Things begin to change when we form Golden Triangle partnerships comprised of business, government and civil society – partners who share common goals but bring diverse experience and resources to the table.

So in Myanmar, Coca-Cola and the NGO Pact are teaching women in rural villages basic financial literacy and business skills. Ma Lin Lin and her husband earned $4 per day working in a rock mine when she joined the programme. After four months of training in Pact’s savings-led empowerment programme, she started her own curry business and began saving some of her income for the first time in her life. Ma Lin Lin’s children do not go to bed hungry any more.

In Kenya, TechnoServe brings its 46-year experience as an NGO connecting people in the developing world to information and markets. Through partnership with Coca-Cola, Technoserve connects Kenyan farmers with local suppliers and buyers, while building farmers’ business skills through training specifically designed for women.

Five-thousand miles away in the Philippines, we are working in a public-private partnership with our local bottler and the national Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) to provide variety store owners with business skills, finance and peer networks. That partnership could not succeed without our partners’ sound training experience, local roots and merchandising expertise.

Returning to Tanzania, the skills Lilian learned through the courses she took have helped her grow a strong business and provide an education for her daughter. Angel’s future is Lilian’s driving motivation. Lilian is also a new force for empowering other young women in her community. She has 11 employees, with two critical roles – cashier and inventory control –  managed by young women. She is teaching them and other young women who want to learn how to run a business. The stronger community that Lilian is helping to build may not be measurable as part of our return on investment, but our business is stronger for the stronger communities that we live and work in.

There are many Lilians around the world who need the same chance. They don’t need cheque-writing or hand-outs. They need a hand extending to life and business skills they can use for the rest of their lives, and share with others. They need access to credit at fair rates, sometimes without a proven track record. They need a network of peers to learn from and share ideas with. They need opportunities, and the training and support to realize those opportunities.

With these things, women can unleash their potential and achieve their dreams. And when a woman has the ability to achieve her dreams, anything is possible. That’s closing the gender gap.

Author: Beatriz Perez is the Chief Sustainability Officer and Vice President of The Coca-Cola Company.

Image: A trader stands outside her warehouse in the village of Bwejuu on Zanzibar island, Tanzania, December 2, 2007. REUTERS/Finbarr O’Reilly