At What Costs? Women Ask?

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Sherna Alexander Benjamin

Trinidad and Tobago

Joined Jun 19, 2014

A photo with earth tone colors and abstract background with leaves with the words At what costs? Women Ask. Other works on the photo state Rural Women Leaders Have Strengths They Draw From Daily to Transform Lives Using a Penny, a Hope, and a Smile. And

Photo Credit: Sherna Alisa Alexander Benjamin

A photo with the words At What Cost" Women Ask.

Women have been leading work within their families, communities, and nations for years. They juggle multiple roles, many of which are unpaid work. "The ILO estimates the value of unpaid care and domestic work to be as much as 9 percent of global GDP (USD 11 trillion), with women's contribution at around 6.6 percent of GDP compared to men's at 2.4 percent of GDP" (ILO, 2022).

Despite global economic, leadership, and development advances, women and girls continue to face significant barriers that restrict their access to the funding they need to change the trajectory of their lives and that of their families. Advance their community and organization by working to implement solutions to address social, economic, health, and education challenges faced by those they serve.

Even in the face of declining funding, onerous grant processes, and the lack of resource networks to amplify their work and drive sustainable impact, women continue to show up and give their best because without women and girls, the world would stop spinning, and everything as we know it would cease to exist.

Gender Pay Gap, Underrepresentation, and Lack of Funding

Gender Pay Gap

Women and girls are integral to the sustainability and survival of our families, communities, broader societies, and every system that exists in society, from economics to health. Globally, women earn "23 per cent less than men," and the gender pay gap continues to undermine the economic stability and health of women worldwide significantly.

Fewer Women in Leadership Roles

Women are underrepresented in leadership roles across every sector, including the nonprofit trillion-dollar industry, where there is a higher percentage of women than men in the workforce; however, women hold less than "75% of leadership positions at nonprofits." 

Funding for Women and Girls Organization is Low

Funding for women's and girls' organizations remains below 2%, even with more women working in the development sector and running rural, community, and national organizations.

Women and Girls Face Significant Poverty

According to the latest UN WOMEN annual report (2024), "At current rates, it will take an additional 137 years to END EXTREME POVERTY among women. Social protection is key for poverty eradication, yet 50.1% of women are covered by at least one social protection benefit, compared to 54.6% of men."

Millions of Girls remain Out of School.

Additionally, "119.3 million GIRLS remain out of school, down by 5.4 million since 2015." There is a stark regression in the area of peace, justice, and strong institutions as women and girls continue to face many life-altering disastrous consequences related to the unhealthy manifestation of conflict.

Armed Conflicts and Conflict-related Sexual Violence have Increased.

The UN Women report shows advances across the SDGs. At the same time, the global picture regarding the state of women and girls is harrowing: "In 2023, about 612 million WOMEN and GIRLS lived within 50 kilometres of at least one of 170 armed conflicts, an increase of 41% since 2015. The United Nations confirmed a 50% increase in cases of conflict-related sexual violence since 2022, with women and girls suffering 95% of these crimes."

Capacity building, collaboration, and investment

The global community cannot look at the advances of a few women as the advancement of all women. Nor can they look at the progress that has been made related to laws and policies, women in leadership, the increase in women registered businesses, and the global awareness of violence against women as indicators that all women can access education, funding, purchase food, and access healthcare services without having to jump loops over significant visible and invisible barriers. The data from UN Women, the ILO, and other international and regional organizations makes a strong case for substantial investment in women across the whole of society.

Competition is Killing Progress

Many women-led organizations are operating in the bloody seas of nonprofit competition. The larger, more resourceful organizations are eating small and rural organizations for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and spitting them out. Unfortunately, international funders and philanthropic organizations enable a competitive culture that is not only violent but shows a lack of creativity, value innovation, and openness to work with new entrants in the sector. New in the sense that small and rural organizations have been overlooked for decades.

Capacity and Institutional Strengthening

There needs to be a concerted effort at the international and philanthropic levels to invest in capacity building and institutional strengthening of small and emerging organizations. One of the many reasons these organizations continually get overlooked is that many have great ideas and have been doing dynamic work in their communities; however, they need more resources to strengthen their organizations and human capital to leverage their skills and bargaining power in the nonprofit market; Skills such as grant and proposal writing, management, stakeholder mapping, and engagement, monitoring and evaluation, product and service differentiation, accounting and reporting, leadership, and succession planning. 

Lack of Collaboration

Due to the competitive nature of the nonprofit sector, many organizations are reluctant to collaborate beyond the scope of referrals and acknowledgment in consultancy spaces. A survival and scarcity mentality undermines and even harms many organizations' work as they cannot adequately serve their clients and customers. Their time and resources are used to develop 'one-up on them' projects to get by versus getting ahead together. In contrast, small and overlooked organizations function in the tyranny of the moment brought on by resource instability.

Nonprofit Hopscotch

Another area for improvement is that many organizations operate from a fragmented place as they continue changing their thematic focus to align with the grant calls. So, five years ago, they were focusing on girls' access to education; three years later, it is climate change, and five months later, it is LGBTQIA+ issues. Many organizations are riding the backs of social, economic, and environmental causes to remain relevant. Sadly, no one wins, and the problems continue to persist. Playing nonprofit hopscotch and scaling services and products to reach new target audiences based on segmentation and identifying an unmet need are not the same.

Investment in Women from Rural to National

International funders, philanthropists, corporate companies, and governments must revisit how they invest in nonprofit organizations and fund development work. Funders have invested resources to address some of the world's most challenging issues for years, yet these issues escalate in unimaginable evolutionary proportions. Change does not come by maintaining the status quo but through many radical acts, including disrupting what is causing the hemorrhaging of resources and the lack of impactful and sustainable results.

Change comes through understanding and identifying the people needing to be noticed and asking critical and curious questions, such as why a significant population in the nonprofit market is being left behind. Nevertheless, they continue to plug away serving the people in their communities. Change comes through disrupting the mafia practices within the nonprofit market and democratizing and decolonizing development funding systems. 

If international funders, individual philanthropists, corporate companies, regional agencies, national institutions, and state agencies fail to investigate their practices and how they enable a culture of inequity, bias, and exclusion while throwing money into the wind. If they fail to question the players in the nonprofit market, and if they place quick work and high numbers over people, the planet, and sustainability, then in that case, world leaders will meet at the United Nations in 2030 and make another sustainable development pact for 2045. However, some questions to ponder until 2030 are: What is the cost to women and girls? What is the cost to men and boys? At what cost to societies? At what cost to the unborn and the adults whose lives are fleeting? And at what cost to the global community in the wake of Industry 5.0

Written by

Sherna Alisa Alexander Benjamin

Social Sustainability, Business, and Development Consultant


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#WomenLeaders #Philantrophy #Nonprofit #GenderPayGap #Poverty #ViolenceAgainstWomen #InvestinginWomen #RuralWomen

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