The document discusses empowering women through financial skills. It notes that empowering women involves raising consciousness about gender roles and improving women's economic resources and security. Policies that raise women's education and employment opportunities can also empower them. Empowerment is a multi-dimensional process where women gain greater control over resources like money and decision making. The World Bank data shows that while women now make up a large portion of the global workforce and education system, they still face challenges like lack of land ownership and risks during childbirth. The proverb "women hold up half the sky" represents recognizing women's role in fighting poverty and advancing social and economic development.

1. Developing Core Skills for
Women – October 2011
Financial Skills for Women
Presented by Ali Engelbrecht
CEO Women In Business
WWW.WOMENINBUSINESS.ORG.ZA

2. INTRODUCTION
 Empowerment of women that will have lasting impacts, must involve consciousness raising
before the social construction of gender, which subordinates women in the family, class,
caste, religion, or society, can be changed.
 The economic empowerment approach has relied on improving women's control over
economic resources and strengthening women's economic security.
 The results also suggest that policies to raise women’s age at marriage, enhance their
education and open greater employment opportunities will also help to empower them, at
least in some respects.
 Empowerment is a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional and multi-layered concept.
 Women's empowerment is a process in which women gain greater share of control over
resources - material, human and intellectual like knowledge, information, ideas and
financial resources like money - and access to money and control over decision-making in
the home, community, society and nation, and to gain “power”. According to the
Country Report of Government of India, "Empowerment means moving from a position of
enforced powerlessness to one of power".
 Empowerment of women lead to dual change that will improve the lives of women and girls
everywhere.
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3. WORLD BANK GENDER EQUALITY
AND DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2012
 Girls now outnumber boys in secondary schools in 45 developing
countries
 Globally 4 out of every 10 workers is a woman
 552 million women joined the global labour force between 1980 and
2008
 Women account for 50% of informal employment globally
 Globally, only 10 to 20 of every 100 land owners is a woman
 Women are responsible for 60 to 80% of all house and care work
 Globally, over a third of women die in their reproductive years
 About 2/5 of girls are never born due to a preference for sons
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4. “WOMEN HOLD UP HALF THE SKY”
PARTICIPATION OF WOMEN IN SOCIETY
 Women Hold Up Half the Sky is an Old Chinese Proverb.
 It can be interpreted in many ways but in the context of this conference I’d say that it
paves the way for recognition that focussing on women in the way to fight global
poverty and national social and economic development.
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5. CONTACT US:
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Want to know more?
Would you like us to present this
topic at a workshop or
conference for you?
Contact us via our website
www.womeninbusiness.org.za
ceo@womeninbusiness.org.za