Research has demonstrated that when women are economically empowered, entire communities benefit. Yet, there is a crucial knowledge gap regarding the most effective interventions that directly advance women’s economic opportunities. To address this gap, the UN Foundation and the ExxonMobil Foundation joined forces in 2012 to produce a Roadmap for promoting women’s economic empowerment.
This website links to the report, a roadmap for promoting women's economic empowerment, published in September 2013, which identifies proven, promising, and high-potential interventions that increase productivity and earnings for different groups of women in diverse country contexts. Many of the interventions are simple and easy to implement, with the potential to benefit a significant number of women. The Roadmap gives funders, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and governments a path to programmes that effectively help women improve their incomes, productivity, and ultimately, their communities.
The website also includes the initiative's work on measurement. The measuring women's economic empowerment report summarises recommended measures to assess direct, intermediate, and final outcomes of women's economic empowerment programs. Outcomes of interest are women's increased productivity, income, and well-being.
In addition, the website includes 18 case studies commissioned for the initiative across four categories – entrepreneurship, farming, wage employment and young women’s employment, and a database of 136 published empirical evaluations of programmes and policies. Learnings from the case studies can be transferrable to a systems approach.
Useful for:
The Roadmap was crafted primarily to guide actions and investments by the private sector and potential public-private sector partnerships.