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Five Female Entrepreneurs in Business Plan Competition of BID Network
The Women in Business Challenge launched by BiD Network has announced the five finalists who will come to The Netherlands to pitch their business to potential investors and participate in the BiD Week and International Marketplace on the 2nd of June 2010 in the Fokker Terminal, The Hague.
Initiated by the BiD Network from the Netherlands, the challenge is a business plan competition that aims to support women entrepreneurs in Africa, Latin America and Asia who are seeking finance for their business.
The five women entrepreneurs selected by an expert jury panel that deemed their business proposals as the best ones among more than 250 participants, are:
- Meenu Vadera, Women on Wheels, Safe transport for women by women in rural India
- Tanvi Patel, Aqua Beauty Salon, Domestic Waste Water treatment solutions.
- Maria de Lourdes Molina, Ecobloks, eco-friendly toys for children
- Maria Victoria Bonilla, Micro Tapas, Colombia
- Marianne Olano, Baycrafts, The Philippines Read more
Twestival Global London is set to Raise Money for Concern Worldwide
Thursday March 25th 2010 will see people meeting in cities across the Globe, ‘Using Social Media for Social Good’. Now in it’s second year, the event, which uses the power of Twitter for marketing, aims to bring people together offline at locally held events in an attempt to improve education, have fun and create awareness.
With this year’s theme of Education, all (and they mean 100% of) ticket proceeds go to Concern Worldwide, which aims to make education accessible to the some 72 million children across the world that presently have no opportunity to go to school.
Last year saw:
- Involvement from 202 cities
- 1,000 volunteers
- 10,000 donors
- Funds raised of over $250, 000
As those involved gave money to improve access to safe and clean water for the 1 billion who currently do not have this.
Concern Worldwide Read more
The Clinton Global Initiative is Empowering Girls and Women Through Information and Communication Technologies
![Laptops for children in Africa cc: Flickr Lil[Kristen Elsby]](http://thenextwomen.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/laptop_flickr-LilKristen-Elsby.jpg "laptop_flickr Lil[Kristen Elsby]")
Laptops for children in Africa cc: Flickr Lil[Kristen Elsby
Since 2005, CGI has:
- Brought together more than 100 current and former heads of state, 10 of the last 16 Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, hundreds of leading CEOs, heads of foundations, major philanthropists, directors of the most effective nongovernmental organisations and prominent members of the media.
- Made more than 1,400 commitments valued at $46 billion
- Improved the lives of more than 200 million people in more than 170 countries
- More than three million people have better access to information technology
- More than $600 million has been invested in or loaned to small and medium-sized enterprises
- Almost three million micro-entrepreneurs have been empowered through microfinance
The 2010 CGI ation areas include: Empowering Girls and Women; Strengthening Market-Based Solutions; Enhancing Access to Modern Technology and Harnessing Human Potential. Of the 12 new initiatives/commitments in place to empower girls and women, 4 focus on the advantages of information and communication technology:
Plan USA and its Partners
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Commit over the next three years to:
- Train 140 adolescent girls from Ghana in media production and journalism skills, Read more
Television’s Impact on The Status of Women in India
Co-author Emily Oster (Integral Options Cafe)
A recent study from the University of Chicago has shown that simply turning on the television can greatly influence a woman’s social standing in rural India. While the study’s focus did not include the effects found from access to the internet, it is clear to see that by providing a portal into a world across the globe, that women’s lives could be greatly improved.
June 2009. In their paper, “The Power of TV: Cable Television and Women’s Status in India,” University of Chicago Department of Economics professor Emily Oster and Robert Jensen of the University of California, Los Angeles, explore the effect of the introduction of cable television in rural areas of India on a particular set of values and behaviors, namely attitudes toward and discrimination against women.
Measuring the Power of Television
The authors’ analysis is based on a survey of 2,500 women in 180 villages in India; they were interviewed once a year for three years in 2001, 2002, and 2003. These years represent a time of rapid growth in rural cable access. During the three years of the study, cable television was newly introduced in 21 of the 180 participating villages. The analysis in the paper relies on comparing changes in gender attitudes and behaviors between years across villages based on whether (and when) they added cable television. The authors used several measures of the status of women. They began with two measures of attitudes: attitudes toward beating and son preference. Attitudes toward spousal abuse were measured by asking women whether beating is acceptable in six possible situations (if a woman neglects children, is unfaithful, etc.), and counting the total number of situations in which she reports beating is acceptable. Son preference was measured by asking women who want more children whether they want their next child to be a boy.
Jensen and Oster found large effects of cable on both of these variables. Women who live in villages that introduce cable see large declines in both the number of acceptable beating situations and son preference; villages that do not introduce cable see no change. This change happens between 2001 and 2002 for villages that introduce cable in 2002, and between 2002 and 2003 for villages that introduce cable in 2003. In other words, the timing of the change in attitudes lines up with the timing of the change in cable access.
How cable television affects status
Soap operas are among the most popular shows on cable: the most popular show in both 2000 and 2007 (based on Indian Nielsen ratings) is “Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi,” (Because a Mother-in-Law was Once a Daughter-in-Law, Also), a show based around the life of a wealthy industrial family in the large city of Mumbai. Many characters on popular soap operas have more education, marry later, and have smaller families – all things rarely found in rural areas; and many female characters work outside the home, sometimes as professionals, running businesses, or in other positions of authority. By exposing rural households to urban attitudes and values, cable and satellite television may lead to improvements in status for rural women. It is this possibility that Jensen and Oster explore in their paper. In particular, they evaluate the effect of the introduction of cable and satellite television on a variety of measures of women’s status: autonomy, attitudes toward spousal abuse, son preference, and fertility. In addition, they explore the effects on education for children, which some authors have argued will increase when the status of women is higher.
“That simply turning on the television can improve a woman’s life as well as that of her children is particularly intriguing in light of the traditional and somewhat more complex approaches to promoting education and enhancing women’s standing in society,” said Oster. “For instance, calls to “empower women” are often vague. Reducing poverty, building schools, and improving teacher quality in order to boost enrollment may be as difficult to accomplish as the problems they are attempting to solve.”
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