Five Key WEE Messages
The following five key messages outlined by the Pacific Women Lead (PWL) at the Pacific Community (SPC) programme, aim to explain the importance of working to increase women’s economic empowerment (WEE) in the Pacific. More details are available in the PWL at SPC programme’s updated 2023 Thematic Brief for WEE.
- There is a significant and persistent gap between men’s and women’s economic opportunities, security and income.
- Women’s empowerment and economic participation is central to sustainable development and sustained poverty reduction.
- Improving women’s economic opportunity requires changes in economic and social policies and laws to support women’s equitable participation in existing markets.
- Women bear the ‘double burden’ of work, exacerbated during the COVID-19 response period.
- Women do not have equal access to the technological and economic resources that can improve productivity and income.
Read more in the 2023 Thematic Brief updated by PWL at SPC: https://pacificdata.org/data/dataset/pwl-thematic-brief-women-s-economic-empowerment-in-the-pacific
WEE Roundtable
The Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) Roundtable is a convening for people who manage, coordinate, and implement WEE projects and activities in the Pacific. It provides WEE practitioners with the opportunity to share experiences, lessons learned and knowledge to assist each other address issues, improve or adapt their WEE approaches.
Any person involved in WEE is welcome to join the Roundtable. To join, email: [email protected]
Members of the WEE Roundtable are united in their commitment to improve their WEE projects and collectively support improved strategic Pacific approaches to advance the empowerment of women.
Formalising the WEE Roundtable was as a direct outcome of the Pacific Women Regional Learning Forum on Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE). The Forum was the first such regional WEE convening and aimed to contribute to and build Pacific understanding and knowledge of economic empowerment and approaches; build on regional research, practitioner expertise and the experiences of women in the region; and to strengthen relationships between development partners working on WEE and catalyse increased communication and more coordinated action. It was held by Pacific Women Shaping Pacific Development in May 2019, with Pacific Women Lead continuing the Forum’s follow-up activities.
The WEE Roundtable is convened by the PWL at SPC programme. It is a cornerstone of the SPC’s approach to address WEE and to support its government and civil society partners implementing WEE initiatives.
WEE Initiatives Supported
Promoting women’s economic empowerment (WEE) contributes to the key outcome to ‘realise women’s rights’ for the Pacific Women Lead (PWL) portfolio, which is implemented by four delivery partners including the key implementing partner, the PWL at SPC programme.
Working across SPC and its 22 Pacific Island member countries, the PWL at SPC programme supports multiple divisions and programmes with WEE activities, such as through:
- Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) Roundtable
- POETCom - the peak body for the organic movement in the Pacific region. It supports women in agriculture value chains through the Building Prosperity for Women Producers, Processors, and Women-Owned Businesses through Organic Value Chains (BPWP) Project. The BPWP Project is funded by the Australian Government, through PWL.
PWL at SPC programme grants also support additional initiatives, not limited to WEE, as listed on the grants webpage.
The broader Pacific Women Lead portfolio – including all four delivery partners and not just SPC – has additional information on funded initiatives for WEE.
Resources and Research
From Participation to Power: Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) in the Pacific – addressing the shortfall of many WEE initiatives to meaningfully address women’s empowerment and provides recommendations and practical actions to strengthen empowerment outcomes of WEE programming: Dataset - Pacific Data Hub
More than 140 publications, feature stories and other resources on WEE, with a focus on the Pacific, are available on SPC’s Pacific Data Hub site for PWL: https://pacificdata.org/data/group/pacific-women (on PDH search for economic empowerment).
For Pacific-specific research women’s economic empowerment, refer to the Toksave Pacific Gender Resource, supported by PWL at SPC: https://www.toksavepacificgender.net/
