Developing a strategy on micro financing for women owned business is a vital step that should be taken by the newly elected government to encourage women participation in the national economy, Chairperson, Women In Management (WIM), Sulochana Sigera told the Daily News Finance.
Banks should provide loans only if the business is registered and they have gone through a proper entrepreneurship program. Thus it is possible to calculate the women contribution to the economy. She said that even though women are already contributing to the economy it is not under any framework either in a way it can be calculated to the country’s GDP.
Another aspect that needs to be looked upon is to ensure safe transportation for women. Thus it encourages women to be employed in various work fields. Facilities should be developed to recruit women as bus drivers and conductors in the public transport system.
Legal enhancements should be implemented to address issues such as employment advertising excluding gender preference and legalizing workplace harassment as a law which is at present existing as a company policy. It is also important to bring laws for pre-schools and day-care centres so that working parents specially women could leave their children safely until they come from work.
Steps should be taken by the appropriate government authorities to educate schoolchildren on future employment opportunities. “This is one of the main issues why we have fewer women in work or businesses because teachers are not aware of the changes happening in the job market,” she said.
Sigera further emphasized that since the newly elected government has the majority, laws should be passed against child marriages. The private sector should be allowed to manage Child rehabilitation centers and orphanages so that it would help corrupted children to come out not as victims but as children seeking to begin a new life.
She also said that women’s participation in politics is important since they are more credible, than men, less corrupted, and have less criminal records in comparison to men.
“If our country looks at women in this way it is so easy to receive more women into politics and more women into local leadership,” she added.
0 comments: