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From Roadmaps to Building Blocks

b2ap3_thumbnail_lady_justice.pngIn a recent Enterprising Women Ezine brief, we focused on the importance of roadmaps promoting women's enterprise development. One key element of establishing "rules of the road" for the economic empowerment of women is a supportive framework of laws.

We've previously mentioned the World Bank's Women, Business and the Law website, and their regular series of WBL reports.  These reports show quite clearly that laws matter. In 128 of 143 countries included in the analysis, legal rights differ by gender—and guess who draws the short end of the legal stick? Further, in many countries women give up legal rights when they marry, taking a step down in the legal hierarchy in favor of their husbands. And, as these and other reports have shown, there is a strong correlation between legal restrictions on women and their power of economic self-determination. In countries where there is less legal disparity between women and men, there are more businesses owned by women.

There's an even stronger underpinning to legal rights, and that's a country's constitutional framework. One can say that the foundation for the building blocks leading to a roadmap for women's economic empowerment (to continue our analogy) is a country's constitution. There's now a fabulous new website, constitutions.unwomen.org, that provides a searchable database of the constitutions of 195 countries. Why is this important? Well, in the words of UN Women (aka the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women) on this website: 

"Constitutions are important mechanisms to entrench human rights… Furthermore, the way a country’s constitution shapes each aspect of State power can facilitate, or limit, opportunities for advancing gender equality." 

Thanks, UN Women, for adding another arrow to our quiver of women's economic empowerment tools!

Julie R. Weeks is president and CEO of Womenable, a for-profit social enterprise that works with leaders to better understand and address the barriers impacting the ability of women to start and grow businesses. She was formerly Director of Research at the Center for Women’s Business Research and Executive Director of the National Women’s Business Council. She serves on the Enterprising Women Advisory Board. 

 

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