In Colombia, only 1.9 million businesses are owned by women in contrast to almost double the amount being owned by men – 3.5 million – despite the fact that 51.2% of the population of Colombia are women. Additionally, the economic value of unpaid domestic and care work in Colombia is 186,000,000 million Colombian pesos and 77% of this work is carried out by women. Furthermore, the income gap between women and men is 33% in rural areas and 6% in the cities. There is a huge huge imbalance between men and women in the business sector, with patriarchy at its core. The pyramidal structure promotes and encourages this type of discrimination and also encourages the generation of harassment within the same work. In La Paz the old traditional patriarchal structures of the Aymara Quechua cultures, in which women are not included in roles of authority, are being reinforced in both the public and private sectors. In every ten public institutions historically only two or three women were appointed to superior positions. Tackling equality through inclusion : La Mano del Mono, Vinnaey Gonzales
Vianney González is the co-creator of La mano del Mono – a non-profit organisation that builds alliances for nature conservation and local communities wellbeing through supporting adventure tourism and social enterprises. Vinnaey studied a Masters in sustainable tourism- where she was inspired by an all female faculty, including directors. At La mano del Mono, they are tackling the problem of gender equality through inclusion. They realised that a lot of their content was unintentionally very male orientated – as is often the case. In order to rectify this, Vinnaey explains that now they are using a more inclusive approach and specifically working on the redesign of the website. For example, they have incorporated female voices and representation into their website. They have also focused on internal training, supported by the LEFIX consultancy, through opening up spaces for dialogue within the organisation. As a result, there has been a strong emphasis on the participation of women in the live sessions, virtual sessions or face-to-face sessions to give them a space to express their voice. That is to say, if they are men and women, its about not only giving the voice and the floor to the same people, but also thinking about those who have not spoken and to see that the opinions of these people are also extremely valuable and not to be overlooked. They are specifically working on a campaign called Mujeres Locales, Cambios Globales ( Local Women, Global Changes) that aims to inspire other women, and showcase the amazing things woman can do and to share knowledge they have or the love and passion for their activities and how to reach more people.
What excites me most about this issue is that we are opening up the space to see the stories, to tell them, to break those paradigms and open up a world of possibilities.
Empowering women through entrepeneurship : Impact Hub Medellín, Federico Restrepo
Impact Hub Medellín is an impact community that connects and manages the creation of value in the entrepreneurship ecosystem. They have successfully created many programmes, always making an effort to take into account gender. Many organisations have focused on output being 50% female. But there is a big flaw here because if structurally and at a societal level womendo not have the same opportunities as men from the beginning, then when it comes to entering programmes as input they are not going to be on a level playing field. So Impact Hub have started to tackle the issue at the root, and think about how right from the start women can be equipped with the knowledge, support, skills and even emotional issues, so that they can compete and collaborate on the same level as the rest of society – that being males. Federico explains in order to achieve 50/50 output, first we have to put a lot of effort into making sure that the input is equal too. Impact Hub Medellín is not working alone on this, they have created a coalition of organisations for Antioquia, Grupo Argos, Bancolombia with Fama and Fundación Ximens to work on this. It must be pointed out that this is not just a fight for women but for men also, so that together knowledge can be shared and everyone can reach their internal potential. There are very few entrepreneurship programmes in Colombia like this one that are only on women with components like this one, of organisational structure, of empowerment and leadership, of connections, benefits and generating an entrepreneurial community that seeks to surround these entrepreneurs with tools that they can use to advance in their entrepreneurial process. Although the programme is currently for 50 and there is hope to increase it in the future. This generalised coalition that has been created has huge potential as although 50 is not massive, it allows each of those 50 to personalise it depending on their needs and where they want to direct this empowerment and development of entrepreneurship.
We are working hard to create these role models for women to inspire a generation of girls who are inspired and can reach their potential in a world where equality is the norm.
Replacing the patriarchal system : I+D en Flora y Fauna
I+D en Flora y Fauna is an organization that has begun to turn the gender equality pyramid around. Whenever there is gender inequality in a work environment specifically, harassment at work will begin to manifest itself – and may even escalate in extreme cases to sexual harrasment, a situation in which there is no gender equality. The existence of these hierarchical structures allow for violence to be generated against women and perpetrated by males in positions of power. Obviously, the same situation also occurs in reverse. So, we want this situation, this patriarchal pyramidal structure to be replaced by a model that is being tested, which will control and reduce these conditions. I+D en Flora y Fauna is trying to prove their hypothesis that an organisational model is possible without the need for this gender inequality, this discrimination within a work environment. Once they have developed this spider’s web model that we have been able to establish as a guideline in which we have been able to reduce certain conditions in our organisation that generate work fatigue, we want to take action in those instances in which we have been able to identify harassment in the workplace.
Our dream is to break those inherited stigmas, of social or patriarchal models, so that there is equality so that men and women can exercise their rights freely.
