Tweet This
The full participation of women and girls is the great unfinished business of the 21st century. We have hard work ahead of us to ensure that women and girls have the same rights, opportunities and expectations as men and boys.
At the Clinton Foundation, my mother and I lead No Ceilings: the Full Participation Project. No Ceilings is taking on the ambitious challenge of looking at the progress women and girls have made over the last 20 years through a data-driven analysis which we hope will give us a better understanding of the gains we’ve made and the gaps that still remain. Informed by that evidence, we can then set an agenda to focus our energies, resources and efforts to focus on what works, hopefully accelerating progress over the next 20 years.
In addition to using the data to guide our work, we are committed to highlighting specific solutions that we know have worked to close the gender gap. Often, the most effective solutions aren’t born from policy roundtables or research from afar, but from concerned people who are coming up with innovative ideas to tackle complicated problems.
On Saturday in Little Rock, Arkansas, No Ceilings hosted Community Based Solutions: A No Ceilings Conversation, to hear from community leaders who are spearheading community-based efforts to advance economic opportunity for women and families in Arkansas and beyond.
Throughout the conversation, three themes emerged:
- Start with Education: Access to high-quality and rigorous education is a clear “pathway out of poverty,” according to Ruthanne Hill of the Arkansas Single Parent Scholarship Fund. We must ensure that women have the chance to attain whatever education they want for themselves and their families, a high school diploma, a college degree and continued lifelong learning. This means supporting environments where learning happens, both in school and at home. Anna Strong, Executive Director of Child Advocacy and Public Health at the Arkansas Children’s Hospital, suggested programs to provide parents with the skills to engage their children in first-learning experiences before they enter a classroom, and place nurse practitioners in schools to work with children, ensuring their physical as well as intellectual wellbeing. Support for education creates a culture where women can access better jobs to lift themselves and their families to greater heights.
- Drive Access to Opportunity: From Arkansas to Asia, we know many women lack access to the income, capital and credit to start their own ventures and thrive. As Grant Tennille from the Arkansas Economic Development Commission and Pierre Ferrari of Heifer International discussed, providing access to microloans, training and resources translates into profits — an investment that benefits entire communities and can even change entrenched gender norms. When women have access to income, they disproportionally invest in turn in the health, education and well-being of their children and families.
- Invest in Imagination: For some young women, a great barrier to economic success and participation is the imagination gap – a lack of support, resources, and encouragement that prevents them from simply imagining what is possible for their lives. Annette Dove of the nonprofit TOPPS discussed creating mentorship and training programs for young girls to not only encourage them to imagine their future careers and long-term planning, but to help provide pathways forward to opportunities in those fields. Communities must invest in flexible resources and support systems, from mentorship and peer-to-peer leaning, to skills training and career readiness, so we can give girls and women the opportunity to imagine and the skills to thrive.
There is no magic bullet or single formula we can apply to ensure economic participation for women and girls, but the work of communities is critical to any effort to catalyze and sustain lasting change. This is an enormous challenge but it’s also an enormous opportunity; an opportunity to look deeply at areas where we have seen progress, and figure out how to scale those successes to reach women and girls globally.
Ensuring women’s full participation is an economic imperative that we cannot afford to ignore.
To share your experience and thoughts on how communities can drive full participation, please take the No Ceilings Survey.
