PCI India defines Women’s Economic Empowerment as ‘a factual situation for every woman in which the individual exercises complete control over their means of income generation through self-chosen livelihood opportunity & have governance on a productive asset with autonomy on saving, spending & investment.’ As PCI positions women at the centre of their developmental projects, every program focusing on WEE takes into consideration four accelerating actors; Individual autonomy, community valuing, market participation and government engagement. Each of these actors features a correlation with the four program pillars placed under the project:
- Encouraging women to assert and safeguard their rights
- Creating an enabling environment for promoting women
- Integrating potentiality into prosperity
- Emboldening policy decisions through proven women’s economic productivity
The four program pillars & their respective accelerating actors enable the organisation to identify and categorise barriers under the four segments. The programmatic challenges & hindrances are segmented in terms of individual capacity, societal support, market constraints and government commitments. Owing to the above, the program strategies for all the women’s economic empowerment projects under PCI are designed to focus on human capital building, strengthening community institutions, merging women’s capabilities to market opportunities, and enhancing government commitments through policy reforms.
PCI, by virtue of the above conceptual framework, has sketched innovative solutions that address the specific needs of women to enable their economic empowerment. These include creating targeted programs that encompass the requirements of the rural & urban women populace by bridging gaps of financial literacy and access through the promotion of skilled women entrepreneurship and advocating for policy amendments that enhance the participation of women-led entrepreneurs.
Consequently, to enable sustained attention and action from stakeholders, PCI, through its projects, focuses on creating an enabling environment that can work towards a world where women have equal opportunities to thrive and succeed economically.
