Meki Batu
cooperative
members wash,
peel, and package
vegetables for sale
to Ethiopian Airlines
and other customers.
After intensive
2SCALE training,
the cooperative
now keeps better
records.
5.6 Lesson 6: Address
Constraints at Different Levels
Through Strategies and
Actions in Line With 2SCALE’s
Intervention Areas
women-only FBOs through which collective action is
encouraged; this is also an effective way of ensuring
women’s access to resources. Improving women’s
access to formal and non-formal financial services is
also key to improving women’s access to productive
assets and technologies.
* Women have better control over productive
resources needed to carry out their activity.
4. Improve access to inclusive FBOs and support
services and decision-making. This encompassed
institutional strengthening of FBOs to make them
more inclusive and make their services gender-
responsive. Promotion of women’s leadership
through affirmative action, such as setting quotas,
and providing training in leadership are also key
to ensuring women’s access to services, resources,
and markets.
* Women become technical, financial, and
business service users.
5. Promote gender-inclusive and socially
responsible SMEs through women’s enhanced
leadership and by supporting small- and medium-
scale businesses. 2SCALE supports socially
responsible firms that create jobs for women and
youth, outsource to female farmers, and put in place
measures to address women’s specific constraints.
Female entrepreneurs as inspiring role models can
also boost female entrepreneurship.
* Women become reliable social entrepreneurs
and business associates.
The following strategies were implemented to achieve
women’s economic empowerment and gender equality in
PPPs supported by 2SCALE:
1.
31
Improve agency 2 and access to life chances and
opportunities. Strategies include capacity building
and gender-responsive, practical trainings, when and
if necessary, specially designed for a female audience.
Female small- and medium-scale rural entrepreneurs
acquire skills in business planning, financial
management, marketing, and customer handling.
* Women become skilled, productive, efficient,
and credible farmers and entrepreneurs
alongside their male counterparts.
2. Introduce customized and locally made time-
and labor-saving technologies. This is achieved by
linking women to non-formal financial institutions,
which in turn improves productivity and incomes and
allows female farmers to upgrade their activities.
* Women adopt innovations and technologies to
increase productivity.
3. Improve access to productive assets and
resources through sensitization of men and
leaders of opinions. Advocacy is undertaken
to include women in FBOs or for the creation of
2
Agency is the capacity of an agent (an individual person or
other entity) to act independently, to make their own free
choices, and to impose those choices on the world. It refers to
capabilities, self-determination, the capacity to make choices,
skills development, etc.