Category Archives: Personal Empowerment

International Womens Day may have already passed, but I see no reason not to celebrate women every other day of the year as well. This week Im examining environmental issues from a less-common perspective gender. Looking at climate change through a gendered lens reveals inequities that may seem unrelated to the untrained eye. However, we would be remiss to consider the outcomes of climate change without acknowledging that some groups are more immediately vulnerable than others.

If Im totally honest, I hadnt heard of the term ecofeminism until recently, when I read an article for class. In laymans terms, it refers to the intersectionality of the feminist and green movements, but, in reality, is much more multifaceted. Ecofeminists see the parallels between the exploitation of the environment and of women and work to bring attention to the ways that women are oppressed by the increasing effects of climate change.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme, environmental conditions impact the lives of women and men in different ways due to historically-established inequalities. Traditional gender roles create differences in the ways men and women act in relation to the environment and environmental change.

Gender gaps are a significant barrier to womens freedom to make decisions and pursue opportunities, as well as to effective sustainable development and resource control and allocation. In many cases, they are at the mercy of a rapidly changing climate. Matcha Porn-In, a Thai human-rights organization, describes the gender-gap issue poignantly: If you are invisible in everyday life, your needs will not be thought of, let alone addressed, in a crisis situation.

While gender norms are slowly being redefined, this work isnt necessarily progressing at the same rate around the world. In many developing countries, women have less opportunities for furthering their education and careers, instead assuming the traditional role of a family caretaker and mother. The UN Sustainable Developments fifth goal seeks to eliminate forms of violence and discrimination against women, achieving gender equality and equal rights to economic resources and property ownership. While this goal is well-meaning and brings attention to a key aspect of development, it is also unspecific and lacking effective actions.

Environmental crises themselves can compound pre-existing issues in society. Climate change impacts, such as crop failure, can cause far-reaching food insecurity, putting added stress on women to source enough food to feed their households. Fossil fuel shortages in areas that lack developed infrastructure may burden women, for whom collecting fuel and water to cook for their households is a daily task. As resources become more scarce, women who act as caretakers spend more of their time expending energy searching for what they need to support their families, effectively ensuring that there is no time for them to further their education, pursue their own goals or better their own lives.

Natural disasters and resource conflict can uproot households and leave women more vulnerable to gender-based violence. Consequently, sustainability management programs created to address climate change issues must do a better job of taking local gender dynamics into account, creating safe spaces and rebuilding infrastructure with the dual goal of creating more sustainable habits as well as increased gender equality.

One way of addressing the societal inequities that women face is the establishment of microfinance institutions. Traditional banks require collateral, assets and high credit scores to take out loans, which keeps much of the worlds poorest populations locked within a perpetual cycle of poverty. In recent years, an increasing number of microfinance institutions have been created for marginalized unbanked communities to promote self-sufficiency and income generation. Many microfinance organizations were created specifically for low-income women, providing low-interest microloans and financial literacy information to start their own businesses and provide personal empowerment and autonomy.

Additionally, women are historically underrepresented in seats of political power, making up less than 25% of national parliamentarians worldwide. As a result, in the governance and sustainable management spheres, womens needs and priorities are often overlooked. Establishing patterns of progressive and inclusive decision making is essential for environmental conservation and also for the promotion of womens rights as a whole.

Jacinda Ardern, the recently reelected prime minister of New Zealand, has an ambitious agenda that includes both environmental and womens rights issues, including net zero emissions by 2050, providing free menstrual products in all schools, approving paid leave for miscarriages and establishing a climate commission. One of the worlds youngest prime ministers, Finlands Sanna Marin, is working towards economic, social and environmental sustainability:closing the pay gap between men and women, legislating stricter nationwide rape laws and attempting nationwide carbon neutrality by 2035.

Additionally, more countries around the world, including Finland, are beginning to provide free college education to university students. While this is the start of closing a financial and gender inequality gap in higher education, we need to consider how to adequately address gender biases and inclusivity in educational environments across the globe. Global female illiteracy rates are much higher than men, but every additional year of attending school provides lasting benefits. Going to school can help women earn higher wages and have better professional opportunities, as well as having fewer children and being less vulnerable to domestic violence.

As we begin the arduous process of redesigning our societies for a more sustainable future, more gender-based issues can also be addressed via urban planning. Developers continue to expand and build in the hopes of creating a greener, more sustainable urban utopia.

Designing sustainable and feminist cities are not mutually exclusive. Improving public transportation reduces the use of privately-owned cars, also benefiting women who may be pregnant or mothers who have to drop children off at daycare before heading off to work.

Walkable streets encourage foot traffic and are more accessible for strollers and wheelchairs. Using renewable energy to create extended lighting systems will save energy as well as potentially reduce violent crimes against women at night.

While these are merely a few examples of the intersection of environmentalism and feminism, I say all this with a caveat. Climate change affects groups around the world differently, but it most severely impacts marginalized communities, including women, Black and Indigenous people and people of color, low-income, those in rural, remote, or informal housing, those with disabilities and trans and gender-nonconforming individuals.

To dip briefly back into the theoretical realm, ecofeminism seeks to establish alliances across multiple sectors of struggle. To achieve real gender equality, we must reassess traditional gender roles and question our belief systems. We cannot effectively fight all aspects of climate change without addressing ensuing socio-economic issues and intersectional identities. Solutions need to recognize the individual ways that people around the globe are experiencing the changing climate, resource scarcity, increasing population density and pollution.

Incorporating intersectional feminism into environmental governance, decisions, activism and change is just one of many ways that we can approach societal injustices head-on and design solutions for unique climate problems faced by women.

At its root, climate change is both caused by and affects class struggles, poverty, racial discrimination and other forms of inequity. We must recognize this interconnectedness; fighting for climate justice cannot come without fighting against oppression and injustices on a larger scale. With greater conscientiousness, global leaders, institutions, NGOs and activists can simultaneously promote environmental protection and gender equality.

Montana Denton is a junior writing about environmental issues, sustainability and society. Her column, Triple Bottom Line, runs every other Thursday.

The rest is here:

Triple Bottom Line: Feminism is still relevant and the environmental movement needs it - Daily Trojan Online

Circus Zambia (Image courtesy of Circus Zambia)

Gift Chansa grew up in Chibolya, a neighbourhood in Lusaka, Zambia, known as one of the roughest parts of the city. Stereotyped as a festering hub of crime and drug culture, Chansas childhood backdrop came with a lot of baggage.

According to Chansa, If you come from Chibolya, then no one takes you seriously. Few people in Lusaka would hire someone from Chibolya, and at job interviews Chansa and his friends used to say that they were from somewhere else, anywhere else.

Sometimes though, said Chansa, you dont think about it and you say, I am from Chibolya, and then people treat you different. Youre always pushed back and reminded where you come from.

Its a vicious cycle, almost impossible to escape. No one could have predicted that Chansa was destined to fly there were to be no boundaries pushing him back, and nothing stopping him from bringing Chibolya along for the ride.

It was in the streets of Chibolya, about 16 years ago,that the seeds of Chansas incredible journey were sown. Having learnt how to do a perfect backflip simply through playing, a nine-year-old Chansa and his childhood pals put together an informal acrobatics group, and organised street competitions and shows that other kids from the neighbourhood would come and watch.

During one of these competitions, Chansa was scouted by Mr Kapota a minor celebrity (and major personality) in Lusaka at the time to be a part of an acrobatic group of young people called the African Dance Factory, started in 2005. It was through this that he was introduced to Barefeet Theatre in 2006, a performance group-come-grassroots initiative for underprivileged children in Lusaka.

Barefeet Theatres programming provided Chansa with the platform that he needed to soar. He was exposed to artists and academics from around the world, introduced to other teenagers who were interested in performance arts, and given the responsibility of facilitating his own workshops and performances. Most importantly, he was provided with a safe space in which he could learn to trust and express himself.

Chansa and his friends spent almost every waking hour after school practising, competing, and showing off their moves. It was a way of life, I would say. There was no time outside of training to get dragged into harmful activities (such as drugs, drinking, and quick money schemes) to which teenagers are susceptible.

I think, in a way, it protected us, because we always had something to do.

By 2013, Chansa had become a junior facilitator at Barefeet. He toured the world, performing in Ireland, Zimbabwe, China and many other countries. The performance group also helped him enroll in a circus school in the Netherlands, where, during his final performance, he had a revelation.

I was amazed by how many people came to see the performance that we did. I was like, oh, people want to see me do this, they want to see me in the circus. People actually appreciate this.

At that moment Chansa knew that he wanted to bring the circus back to Chibolya, and to put on shows in the neighbourhood itself.

That way people could come into the compound and see our shows and see that not all young people from there are criminals. There are also young people who need a chance. They need help to reach their full potential.

And thus was the genesis of Circus Zambia, what Chansa refers to as a social enterprise that equips young people with circus, life skills, education support, and job opportunities.

Co-founded in 2016 with Chansas childhood friends, Amos Malokwa and Bernard Kaumba, as well as Charlotte Groen from the Netherlands, Circus Zambia comprises two major parts. The first is the performance company (the guys who are professional at eating fire, juggling, stilt-walking etc.) The incredible bodily feats executed by this group provide a substantial amount of the funding for the latter section of Circus Zambia: The Social Circus Hub.

The Social Circus Hub programme is designed to support the development of children from Chibolya and other underprivileged neighbourhoods in Lusaka. Healthy living, community building, and body contortions are all a part of the holistic curriculum, which is organised into three sections: Body, Mind, and Soul.

The Body section of the programme is the physical training. Chansa calls it the roadmap for young people to learn how to be performers, how to do acrobatics, how to juggle, do a handstand, a backflip.

Children enroll in the Toes level, then progress through Knees, Shoulders, and finally Heads. Once you are a Head you are a trained circus performer. Many of the programmes graduates stay to be a part of Circus Zambia itself, while others join circus troupes elsewhere in the world.

The Mind section of the Social Circus is all about education. Circus Zambia provides money for about 100 children a year to attend local schools. The funding, when it doesnt come directly from the revenue generated by the shows put on by the performance company, comes from international grants as well as local benefactors and campaigns on gofundme. The circus also has a library programme in which children are exposed to literature and are able to borrow books at any time.

The final section, Soul, is the real essence of the circus. It tackles issues that young people face in local communities, issues that are difficult to tackle within traditional social structures.

One such issue is that of safe sex. Its hard to talk about sex in Zambia, Chansa told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in 2018, nobody talks about sex. This is a huge problem in a country that was so devastated by the AIDS epidemic in the early 2000s.

Circus Zambias Clowns for Condoms initiative is an attempt at talking about these issues in an entertaining way. Sponsored by MTV Staying Alive Foundation, the circus puts together hilarious shows and workshops that freely address the issues of STIs, safe sex, condoms, and the origins of HIV. The clowns are usually accompanied by members of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, who provide testing and further educational literature on the subject.

Another issue that was tackled by the circuss Soul programme was that of gender equality and women empowerment. A project named Pamodzi Ya Bakazi, sponsored by Danish company CISU, featured performances that tackled some of the issues that women face.

The use of clowning, as Chansa refers to the humorous side of the circus, is essential in getting important messages across to both the members of the company and the audience.

Fun is a good way to engage people because theyre watching you and theyre amazed. Theyre happy. When we perform, we want people to have an experience, a memorable experience so that they wont forget the message that we are actually portraying.

What could be more memorable than a man riding a unicycle juggling fire sticks, and then talking about sex?

Fun and laughter are also therapeutic, says Chansa. We are so assailed with dreary stories, statistics, and troubling social realities that sometimes the only way to get things across is to feel better about them, and when you laugh its infectious, because the person next to you will laugh, and the next person will feel the positivity.

The Soul of the circus is all about reaching out to young people and enabling them to become change-makers. Empowering them. Providing them with skills, soft skills in a way, so that they can reach their full potential, Chansa explained. And, according to its own estimates, Circus Zambia has reached about 5,000 Zambian children per year since its establishment.

Its fascinating that Circus Zambia has been so successful in these social initiatives, being that circuses have a historical reputation as a nexus for outsiders, freak shows, and vagabonds. Colloquially, one runs away to join the circus, they dont return home and get social benefits from it.

But this very fact is one of the reasons that it works so well, Chansa explains. A group of outsiders is almost always an accepting one; Circus Zambia aims to include children from all walks of life in its community. The circus is not competitive, you work in an ensemble, as a team. When youre developing something, you communicate and share ideas, and those are important things to learn for yourself. You learn to trust each other through the process of training.

In the dog-eat-dog, late-capitalist, Covid-riddled world of today, an accepting community to bond and create with is a magical idea to anyone. But its paramount to the children of Chibolya, whose lives are in danger of falling back into the vicious cycle that coming from a rough neighbourhood implies.

Further, when you perform, you express your feelings, you express who you are, and the people accept you. That builds you, because you can progress and change; you dont stay the same person.

Chansa elaborated on the confidence that this type of expression affords children, and how important it is to their development and growth. He talked about teaching young kids who learn circus tricks extremely quickly.

Just realising that they can pick something up, that gives young people confidence young people, that when they came to Circus Zambia, they wouldnt even speak in front of anyone because they were so shy. But now they can stand up to me and say, What are you saying, Gift? And that fuels you. You realise that theyve really grown, and theyre confident. And its because they stand in front of people and they perform and theyre interacting with different people in different ways.

Joining the circus also teaches another invaluable lesson, one thats needed to succeed in life: discipline. Chansa, in his personal journey, learnt that, If Im disciplined enough, I can achieve what I want through what I do, because in order for us to put up a performance we need to practise and train. What the audience sees is just the end-product that we have put so much time into creating, rehearsing, and perfecting.

Its the same sentiment that he wants to impart to the young members of Circus Zambia, that discipline of when you drop something, you pick it up, you try again, you keep going. Its a trust in oneself, a confidence that through discipline and determination you can do things you thought impossible, a practice-makes-perfect mentality, that Chansa wishes to (and does) impart to the young members of Circus Zambia.

Part of growing this confidence is the acceptance of fear as an innate reality of life, but also as something that can be overcome. Children experience the danger that goes in [to performing], the fears we have before we perform. What might happen, what might not happen. They learn that even with hours and hours of practice, things go wrong, because life is unpredictable, and thats okay. Its about embracing fear, regarding it as a challenge to rise up to, rather than something to run away from.

The realities of Covid-19 have hit Circus Zambia hard. Their year of touring around the world was put to a stop, and many of their projects that required larger gatherings of children are obviously no longer safe to carry out.

Were surviving, Chansa responded to a question about how Circus Zambia was doing. Just as he had learnt to embrace the fear and danger of circus performance, he has accepted the challenge of this new reality.

It just made me realise that, okay, were taking a risk, we are always taking a risk. And I think its what we do best. And because of this I think we will survive. DM/ML

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A ring of empowerment: The circus that teaches young people how to win at life - Daily Maverick

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The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy- hooks, 1994

Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom published in 1994 was bell hooks first major work on education. In a very personal style, she critically delineates the understanding of pedagogies inside a classroom and walks us through the importance of resistance, experience and ecstasy in teaching as well as learning in Teaching to Transgress.

The school attempts to create an ideal educational environment by employing various institutional practices to silence non-conformity and it is made possible through continuous disciplining and surveillance of the minds and bodies of students (Kjaran 2014). I remember the incident happened in 2018, in Kamala Girls School of Kolkata, where 10 girls were accused of indulging in homosexual activities, who were forcefully asked to admit so in writing by the then acting headmistress of the school.

Also read: Bringing About Feminist Reforms Through Reflection Based Educational Practices

bell hooks, in Teaching to Transgress, illustrated the significance of feminist rethinking of pedagogical practices in order to engage and reinvent various possibilities and to create a learning community which is deeply engaged in, hearing one anothers voice , in recognising one anothers presence in the classroom.

bell hooks, in Teaching to Transgress, illustrated the significance of feminist rethinking of pedagogical practices in order to engage and reinvent various possibilities and to create a learning community which is deeply engaged in, hearing one anothers voice , in recognising one anothers presence in the classroom.

Home was a place where I was forced to conform to someone elses image of who and what I should be. School was the place where I could forget that self and, through ideas reinvent myself. (hooks 1994, pp-3)

In Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks addressed how her experience of learning and attending the school changed with racial integration. The sheer joy she used to experience in reinventing new ideas and self during her early schooling then got transformed into a distressed classroom reality where racist stereotypes were reinforced. The role of excitement and pleasure in the classroom space is often dismissed as the banking system of education considers these experiences as disruptive to the learning process. hooks also expressed, the assembly line approach of learning merely aims to confine pupils instead of empowering them.

As bell hooks manifests in her book how Paulo Frieres works (the Brazilian thinker, author of the book Pedagogy of the Oppressed) were her first introduction to critical pedagogy, my formal introduction to the same happened along the lines of reading her works. It is often witnessed how the bourgeois educational structure encourages the dichotomy between public and private. It essentially aims to make a distinction between being an academic and their habits and life practices.

A question which became central with the rise ofthe #metoo movement is to how to address this compartmentalisation which overlooks the biases and dismisses the experiences of survivors. hooks thus importantly expressed the need for a progressive pedagogic practice in Teaching to Transgress. It must encompass discovering alternative strategies for both teaching and learning and offer the need of self-actualization for both teachers and students. It is, thereby, significant as a teacher/professor to acknowledge the privilege with which one enters the classroom instead of upholding the idea of a mind/body split. The practice of engaged pedagogy emphasises on the interrogation of various positionalities from where one brings about their narratives and experiences in everyday classroom discussions. It enhances the capacity and ability to question and resist biases and take greater risks for a holistic and comprehensive empowerment of not only as an individual but also as a community of teachers and learners.

There was this one sentence of Freires that became a revolutionary mantra for me: We cannot enter the struggle as objects in order to later become subjects. (hooks 1994, pp-46)

The fourth chapter of Teaching to Transgress, Paulo Freire illustrates a playful exchange of dialogue between Gloria Watkins (her own self) and bell hooks (her writing voice). The chapter intricately deals with how Freires liberatory works deeply influenced hooks to engage with the process of critical thought. She expressed how she could deeply identify with Freires work which had a profound impact on her thinking and consciousness raising. Her intimate engagement with Freires work related to literacy helped her find resistance in liberatory paradigms which can make everyone feel included in the education system.

As an anti racist and feminist writer, hooks acknowledge the phallocentric construction of the discourse of liberation that can be found in Freires writing in Teaching to Transgress. Yet she emphasises why Freires work on recognising subjective position is crucial and necessary for understanding the model of critical pedagogy. hooks writes how the feminist thinking she employs in her writing builds her capacity to constructively critique Freires work instead of dismissing the informed perspective his work represents. She writes, critical interrogation is not the same as dismissal (hooks 1994, pp-49).

Freires concept of literacy questions the politics of domination often witnessed in a classroom space. This helped hooks to reflect upon how the specifics of racial and gendered realities are often rendered invisible in a classroom discussion. To describe her personal interaction with Paulo she wrote, For me our meeting was incredible; it made me a devoted student and comrade of Paulos for life (hooks 1994 pp-55). She witnessed how Freire embodies the practice he describes in theory. She thus significantly writes about praxis in Teaching to Transgress. She emphasised on the importance of engaging in action and reflection in order to participate in the true transformation of the society and engaging in practicing critical pedagogy is instrumental in this transgression.

Also read: A New Report Tracks School Educational Reforms In Delhi From 2015-2020

..once you learn to look at yourself critically, you look at everything around you with new eyes. (hooks 1994, pp-117)

In Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks also explores how feminist thinking in the classroom can develop the classroom as a space to have dialogue where one can express their dissent and also in the process forge interpersonal relationships. She extensively addresses the gatekeeping exercised by white feminists who perceived the inclusion of conversation around race in the feminist movement as threat to their own hegemonic hold in the movement. The specific realities and issues faced by black women was absolutely absent from the existing body of feminist scholarship for a long period of time.

She also writes how there were multiple factors which discouraged black women from engaging and producing the feminist scholarship. The act of committing to feminist politics is more than often viewed with suspicion. The sense of alienation experienced by individuals routinely as they identify themselves as feminists, develop a distancing attitude towards feminism amongst young women. hooks significantly addresses how examining our own standpoints critically and transforming our own consciousness is the first stage in the process of feminist politicization (hooks 1994, pp-117). She extensively writes about the power exercised by white women either benevolently or tyrannically on black women in Teaching to Transgress.

The lack of confrontation and willingness to engage in dialogue stands in the way of establishing solidarity between white women and black women which is essential for the collective feminist movement to step forward. She argues introducing feminist thinking in the classroom will not only dismantle the existing academic hegemony but also enable one to interrogate ones own biases.

To Educate for freedom, then we have to challenge and change the way everyone thinks about the pedagogical process- (hooks 1994, pp-144)

bell hooks reimagines classroom as a space characterised by critical interrogation and reciprocal exchange of dialogues. As a professional academic (teacher/professor) one is required to be critical of their own pedagogical practice and accept criticism from others and especially students. In the classroom one has to be profoundly aware of the privilege their position accompanies and be sensitive towards it. The mind/body split overlooks the position of privilege one holds in the classroom and reinforces the hegemonic ideals and values. hooks thus writes in Teaching to Transgress that its time for us to rethink our pedagogical practice and deconstruct the traditional biases we carry with ourselves into the classroom. The act of simply adding radical subject matter in the curriculum might be the initial steps but is not enough to create a liberatory pedagogy. She writes, Education as the practice of freedom is not just about liberatory knowledge, it is about a liberatory practice in the classroom (hooks 1994, pp-147).

In Teaching to Transgress, hooks writes, Thats the difference education as the practice of freedom makes. The bottom line assumption has to be that everyone in the classroom is able to act responsibly (hooks 1994, pp-152). The classroom thereby is a significant space which must empower students and teachers simultaneously by building a community of learners together.

It is often considered that the classroom is distinctly divided into two groups, active preachers (teachers/professors) and passive listeners (students). Thus for a critique of liberatory pedagogy it is difficult to imagine that a classroom must be a space where teachers and students are working together. As a teacher, one is not only responsible for creating an environment where students speak up their views and also they listen to others opinions respectfully. In Teaching to Transgress, hooks writes, Thats the difference education as the practice of freedom makes. The bottom line assumption has to be that everyone in the classroom is able to act responsibly (hooks 1994, pp-152). The classroom thereby is a significant space which must empower students and teachers simultaneously by building a community of learners together. An equal commitment towards reimagining the education which critically engages, interrogates and practices freedom.

hooks bell (1994), Teaching to Transgress: Education as the practice of Freedom

Kjaran, Ingvar Jon (2017): Constructing Sexualities and Gendered bodies in school spaces: Nordic Insights on Queer and Transgender students, Newyork: Palgrave Macmillan

Specia Akello & Osman A Ahmed (2015), Education as a Practice of Freedom: Reflections on bell hooks, retrieved from, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1079754.pdf

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Teaching To Transgress: Analysing bell hooks Work Reimagining Education Critically - Feminism in India

In their website, it was with this quote from Australian novelist Tim Winton that the scholars of HopeLab@DLSU introduced their work:

There is an assumption that hope is a feeling, but I see it as a discipline... If there is anything in this world that you love, hope is required... To change the conditions that youre faced with... so that hope is plausible, that is your responsibility... even if you are not feeling emotionally hopeful...

The passage encompasses the unique task that the researchers set up for themselves: to inquire into hope as a measurable construct that can be elicited for the purpose of promoting overall psychological well-being, including academic functioning, achievement, etc.

Hope and Well-being

HopeLab researchers position hope as a character strength and a resiliency factor. They have aligned their hope-focused research goals with the UNDPs Sustainable Development Goal of health and well-being for all. This provides greater impetus to focus on preventive and positive psychological approaches to address questions on mental health.

Looking into the consequences of hope on well-being and other positive outcomes has led to collaborations with social scientists from various local and international organizations. Recently, it was with Pampanga-based non- government organization Liferisks, which needed help on developing a free online mental health assessment website that will be used to screen Filipinos who might be at risk for psychological disorders. Liferisks tapped University Fellow and HopeLab Director Dr. Allan B.I. Bernardo who is doing pioneering work on locus-of-hope or hope-related thoughts. Out of an existing set of tests that measures hope as a trait-like concept, Bernardo developed for Liferisks a short state version of the scale or temporal version in English and Filipino. This is supposed to make it easy for Liferisks to administer the test online, while aiming to still have good psychometric properties.

Lasting 10-15 minutes, the test contains a set of questions that will assess sleep quality, well-being, social support, social media use, and anxieties and hopes while being quarantined at home.

There is also a designated questionnaire for frontliners and other medical workers that seeks to keep in mind possible post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms in light of their work in the field.

In a similar project, Bernardo is collaborating with The Seventh Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangdong, China, which is also studying the role of locus-of-hope in the well-being of medical health workers during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Locus-of-Hope

Bernardos locus-of-hope model extends the Hope Theory of Charles R. Snyder (1994), and takes into account more culturally diverse constructions of agency in hopeful thinking.

The model assumes that hope involves positive thoughts related to ones ability, determination, and strategies in achieving important life goals. It also assumes that agency in goal pursuit involves both internal or personal agency, as well as external or shared agency with ones family, peers, and spiritual or supernatural forces.

As such, the locus-of-hope model defines four dimensions of hope: internal, external- family, external-peer, and external-spiritual loci-of-hope. These are all typically measured using the 40-item scale.

Research on locus-of-hope has revealed positive outcomes of internal and external locus-of-hope dimensions in students, young adolescents, women victims of intimate partner violence, migrant workers, low-skilled workers among other populations in various Asian and North American samples.

Culturally appropriate assessments and interventions

The locus-of-hope model and other research projects by HopeLab scientists have led to culturally appropriate psychological assessments and interventions that have proven especially useful to Filipinos.

These include the translation of depression, anxiety, and stress scales into Filipino, Cebuano, Ilocano, Kapampangan, and Ilonggo (funded by NAST/DOST) and developing hope-building efforts based on locus-of-hope theory that aim to provide low intensity psychological interventions for the mental well-being of local senior high school and university students and teachers.

Future phases of such projects may include mobile phone apps and Internet-based versions to widen their reach.

Far-reaching implications

As part of their objective to contextualize positive psychological concepts and interventions in the Philippine and Asian setting, HopeLab has produced numerous publications about the well-being of Filipino students, OFWs, and low-skilled Filipino workers. It also has research projects involving participants from Malaysia, Hong Kong, Macau, and China.

The extensive output of HopeLab members now range from studies on the well-being of migrant workers to effects of financial stress on students to surveys of character strengths of Filipinos to locus-of-hope among victims of domestic violence.

The implications are far-reaching and not only for the academic pursuit of understanding the cultural dimensions of psychological strengths, or an individuals psychological well-being. Research has unleashed the power of hope as a catalyst, a tool to change lives, by showing a scientific means toward achieving self-improvement, resilience, and personal empowerment.

For more information about HopeLab@DLSU, please visit https://allanbibernardo.wixsite.com/hope-lab-at-dlsu

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Is there reason to hope? - Times Higher Education (THE)

The rebrand was driven by two factors: changing nature of vulnerability, with more people needing support more often on account of the effects of climate change and other natural and social issues; and a generational shift in the nature of giving, which impacting the organisation with young people more motivated to contribute.

The stripped back, modern and minimal design system and guidelines, including a suite of strong, distinctive brand assets, support the central brand positioning, We are what we do. While worthy, Red Cross global tagline, The power of humanity could be overwhelming for supporters. Principals in-house brand voice agency XXVI evolved the tagline to, Act for humanity, which gives people a sense of personal empowerment. This led to the development of a brand voice and narrative to complement the new strategy, identity and tagline.

The refreshed brand builds on and makes sense of Red Cross fundamental principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence, voluntary service, unity and universality. It transforms these principles into practice and rallies people to act for humanity, says strategy director at Principals, Moensie Rossier.

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Australian Red Cross reveals refreshed brand positioning - 2021 - Articles - Transform magazine

Photo: In the Indian state of Karnataka, the social enterprise Project Defy work to create nooks, i.e. learning environments where learners can learn new skills and design their own education programs.

In its 72 years of independence, India has shown its unprecedented prowess in building a modern, democratic nation. It has lifted millions out of poverty, is one of the fastest growing economies in the world and has increased its global influence by becoming a member of the G20 and the BRICS. More recently, it has played a central role in providing the world with COVID-19 vaccines as it has one of the largest pharmaceutical manufacturing capacities in the world.

However, whats so unfortunate and saddening for a country making such strides on a global scale is that its gender gap is big, and it continues to grow wider.

The 2020 Global Gender Gap report says that India is the only country in the world where the economic gender gap is larger than the political gender gap. Only 25 percent of women participate in the labor market, one of the lowest participation rates across the globe. And, female estimated earned income is a meager one-fifth of male income, which also contributes to them among the lowest wage earners in the world.

Social change in womens status is crucial for India to continue its progress; empowering them economically can play a significant role in realizing womens rights and narrowing the gender gap. An example of an ecosystem that is playing an increasingly important role in economically empowering women is the social enterprise space.

Social enterprise is a really powerful force for womens empowerment and its still under-utilized, says Mark Richardson of Social Impact Consulting, who led the research of a British Council report on the role of social enterprise in supporting womens empowerment in India.

The report found that social enterprise is playing a growing role in womens empowerment by developing womens skills, providing employment and giving women a voice in their community. According to the report, of women who started a social enterprise 80 percent felt an increased sense of worth, 82 percent reported increased confidence and 49 percent said it made them feel they could make their own choices.

According to Amani Institute India, nearly 25 percent of all social enterprises in India are led by women, compared to less than 10 percent of commercial small and medium enterprises that have a woman at the helm. Women in India are often subject to discrimination from their families, communities, and investors when compared to their male peers. This issue is even more severe for women social entrepreneurs because social entrepreneurship can be stigmatized as being unprofitable, said Shehzia Lilani, the Country Director of Amani Institute India.

Assessing the needs of Indian women social entrepreneurs, the U.S. Consulate General in Chennai helped to launch the Womens Global Development Prosperity initiative (WGDP). The program establishes a platform that can give women social entrepreneurs access to information, capital, mentorship and other such opportunities they lack in social and commercial enterprises.

And so was born the Women in Indian Social Entrepreneurship Network (WISEN), a platform to support female social entrepreneurs from all over India. Designed and facilitated by Amani Institute India, in collaboration with ANDE India (Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs), and with funding support from the U.S. Consulate General in Chennai, WISEN is the first of its kind formal network.

I am a first-generation graduate from a marginalized community. I had very few opportunities for my personal and professional development. I joined this national level network to explore my potential and learn from a team of women who crossed several milestones in their life. From Amanis capacity building sessions, I realized the importance of my wellbeing, and the energy I had, said M. Padmavathi, a managing trustee of the nonprofit COROAT and member of WISEN.

As the primary capacity building partner for WISEN, we designed a 6-month, online program that offered 40 women entrepreneurs a platform to access trainings, mentoring and coaching sessions, collaborative projects and community building initiatives, said Lilani.

ANDE brought in subject matter experts who delivered masterclasses for the women entrepreneurs. Formal peer support groups have been known to be great pillars of support in an entrepreneurs journey, and research showed us that women entrepreneurs did not enjoy access to the same kinds of networks as their male counterparts. This made the creation of WISEN a necessary step to strengthen the ecosystem for women entrepreneurs, elaborated Sucharita Kamath, India Chapter Manager at ANDE.

Furthermore, the pandemic added another threat to the survival of social enterprises, increasing the necessity of support networks to overcome challenges.

With the disruptions caused due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the business and organizational realities of all 40 women entrepreneurs changed. Keeping this in mind, we redesigned the WISEN program with the objective of making it relevant and immediately applicable for the selected women entrepreneurs. We wanted to create a self-sustaining network for women entrepreneurs who were leading their organizations through a pandemic, Lilani added.

Megha Bhagat, a co-founder of the social enterprise Project Defy and another member of WISEN, said, Networking with a purpose in an ecosystem built for men is far less cumbersome with women networking platforms like WISEN. Entrepreneurship has a gendered experience and finding groups that have women entrepreneurs holding each other up is quite a task. WISEN is an attempt to change that, to allow the gendered experience to find a brilliant circle of trailblazers,

We received over 215 applications from which we selected 40 entrepreneurs for the program that represented diversity in region, sector, organizational maturity and experience within the cohort. 41 percent of the entrepreneurs ran non-profit organizations, 51 percent ran for-profit organizations and the remaining had hybrid business models. Some organizations were as young as two years and some had over 10 years of existence. This led to fantastic opportunities for cross-pollination and experience sharing within the cohort. We will continue to actively recruit new members on a quarterly basis, concludes Lilani.

WISEN is currently looking for new partners to help carry the network forward and provide additional resources to its members.

Image credit: Project Defy

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Empowering Women and Social Enterprise in India so Both Can Thrive During the Pandemic - Triple Pundit

As fashion trends go, the move of activewear from gyms and fitness studios into mainstream society has been impossible to ignore. Like it or not, we live in a lycra world.

Tight-fitting leggings, yoga pants, sports bras and crop tops are everywhere from the catwalk to cafes. COVID-19 accelerated the trend, with working from home driving a recent surge in sales.

But the activewear industry has been growing exponentially for the past ten years. While the clothing is made for men and women, it is the womens market that has driven this phenomenal growth.

The trend has been widely celebrated, criticised, parodied and sometimes dismissed as simply the latest fashion trend in a society obsessed with conspicuous consumption.

On closer examination, however, activewear plays a fascinating role in 21st-century gender definitions, reinforcing and resisting popular ideas about femininity.

Walk through any activewear store and you will be bombarded with empowerment and self-help rhetoric emphasising the importance of achieving a fit, healthy lifestyle with the right outfit and a positive attitude.

Various scholars have shown how large activewear companies use this type of language get moving and this is not your practice life to reinforce the notion of womens responsibility for their own body maintenance, regardless of any social or personal barriers.

Others have shown how activewear companies marketing approaches encourage women to use physical activity as a means of self-transformation and a pathway towards a more fulfilled life.

Read more: Antibacterial activewear? The claim is just as absurd as it sounds

Its a version of femininity based on a womans consumption and the ability to maintain her own health and appearance. As feminist sport scholars have shown, society celebrates women who are in control of their bodies and active in their pursuit of femininity and health.

In our own research, we argue that wearing activewear in public is a way of saying I am in charge of my health and conforming to socially acceptable understandings of femininity.

In this sense, activewear (not to be confused with its less sporty athleisure offshoot) has become the uniform of what we might term the socially responsible 21st-century woman.

Part of the appeal of activewear is that it is comfortable and functional. But it has also been designed to physically shape the body into a socially desirable hourglass female form.

High-waisted leggings that sit just above the navel are marketed as having a slimming effect. They are also often promoted as butt sculpting, creating the desirable booty that has become valued (somewhat problematically) in mainstream culture.

Read more: Dressed for success as workers return to the office, men might finally shed their suits and ties

As some have argued, this is yet another example of the appropriation of Black and Hispanic cultures for corporate profit.

With new materials designed to accentuate (not just support) particular aspects of womens bodies, activewear helps promote the idealised female form as being curvy but fat-free.

And while this idealised form has changed over recent decades from thin, to thin and toned, to the toned hourglass the current ideal remains largely unobtainable for most women.

But there is another side to this phenomenon. We wanted to explore womens own experiences of wearing activewear. Interviewees of different ages, body types, ethnicities and cultures spoke about activewear as being not only comfortable and functional, but also liberating.

From corsets and long dresses in the Victorian era to the high heels of the 1950s housewife, the latest beauty and clothing trends have often constrained womens bodies and movements.

But the women in our research group talked about the freedom they experienced in being able to move comfortably through the day, from work to school pick-up, from the gym to the cafe.

Even so, not all activewear-clad bodies are considered acceptable. Some, particularly larger bodies, are stigmatised and criticised when they dont meet the feminine ideal.

Read more: Your 'ideal' body, and why you want it

Some even experience physical abuse or verbal harassment for wearing the wrong clothing in public. Its all part of a long history of social attempts to regulate womens bodies.

Until recently, activewear marketing was primarily targeted at young, thin, wealthy white women. In 2013, lululemon founder Chip Wilson openly stated his brands leggings dont work for larger body types.

In response to these limited definitions perpetuated by the activewear industry, some women have established their own labels. In Aotearoa New Zealand these include the increasingly popular Hine Collection.

Founded by a Mori woman frustrated by the limited sizing of activewear, the brand features larger-sized models and caters to women of diverse body shapes and cultures.

Activewear has even been worn in protest against the policing of womens bodies in public places such as schools, churches and shops where the wearing of leggings has been deemed not respectable and too distracting for men.

In 2018, there was outrage when young track athletes in New Jersey were told they couldnt train outside in their sports bras when the male football team was practising.

Other protests and writings have made leggings and sports bras symbols of pride and a challenge to those who seek to dictate womens bodily choices.

Most women, however, choose activewear simply because it gives them the ability to move with purpose and comfort throughout their day. While this might not be an overtly political act, it is nonetheless a subtle statement that women are not going to be controlled or objectified. They have pride in their moving bodies.

Activewear is far from a mundane clothing choice. Rather, it contributes to our definition and understanding of femininity and gender in the 21st century.

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Sure theyre comfortable, but those leggings and sports bras are also redefining modern femininity - The Conversation AU

Stephanie Patzer freely admits, what she does isnt for everyone.

Patzer is a life coach. A personal trainer for your heart, mind and soul, says her Capture Kismet website, adding her businesses goal is empowering women in motion.

I know it seems hokey to some people, Patzer said of her work. And Im okay with that. If youre not comfortable or engaged in it, youre probably not my client anyway.

Like many during the pandemic, Patzer found herself quarantined and closed off. The mother of two who has worked in sales, been a teacher and owned her own boutique business, looked inward and found an outward purpose: what if she could turn the growth she experienced having a life coach into a business doing the same for others?

Patzer would use her quarantine to earn her life coach masters certification from the Transformation Academy, a Florida-based online company and leader in purpose-driven entrepreneurship. A business coach helped move Patzers fledgling business forward with marketing and determining what her business goals were and who she wanted her clients to be.

She helped me figure out what kind of clients I want, Patzer said. Do I want clients that kind of align with the way that I think or do I want any clients?

Patzer launched Capture Kismet last summer as the only Mills County area business providing womens empowerment coaching. Her clients would be any woman she felt like she connected with and was comfortable with her particular brand of intention and authenticity.

I always want people to know that conversations are just conversations, she said. Theres never any pressure from me. I would rather let people know this is out there because if Im not their coach maybe somebody else will be. I feel its an important part to have an accountability partner if you have some intentional work youre wanting to do.

Six years ago, Patzer had never even heard the term life coach.

It was only after attending a yoga retreat where many of the attendees, most hailing from the East or West coasts, made reference to their many life coaches did she educate herself.

Them having a life coach was the same as you and I drinking water, Patzer said. It was part of their daily routine. I was curious so I sat down and talked about it.

Shes had her own life coach ever since.

In the world we live in, five years later, people are probably familiar with the idea but sometimes when I say what Im doing and what my business is I get, What is that?

What THAT is can vary by client and, certainly, by life coach. Patzer sees life coaches and therapists under the same umbrella.

A therapist may look back more on what trauma youve encountered or what happened in your past in order to move forward, she said. A coach, my job, what I do with my clients is I look at what goals do they want to reach and what is in front of them they are interested in and we create the baby steps to get to that goal.

She took on her first client last August and has had a steady base in a variety of programs since. Her Course to Courage program, with a curriculum designed by Patzer, runs eight weeks. Her Womens Circles, which centers on themes important to women for 90 minutes each week, has been meeting via Zoom during the COVID pandemic.

The intentional work of the group can often be heavy and enlightening.

They dig into heavy topics like anti-racism, Patzer said. Were going to talk abut toxic masculinity and using our voice in a world that wants us to be quieted. Theres been some intense topics and its been fabulous.

The Glenwood Area Chamber of Commerce recently contracted with Patzer to run a nine-month leadership coaching program. She and six other women meet monthly to discuss how to improve communication, creativity and motivation in business and employees. Its part guidance, part school and part support group.

The theme is leadership, she said. Its mindful leadership, its thoughtful leadership and its compassionate leadership. We are in times where there is a lot of black and white thinking. This is a way to maneuver through that talking about intent versus impact and to study intentions within your own world that can cross over into the world at large.

The goals of each client whether in groups, the leadership program or the individual that seek Patzer differ but all focus on recognizing and overcoming roadblocks to self-improvement.

Some of my clients want to have better relationships with their children, for some of them its been more career goals, some have been wanting to start a business, she said. My job is to deal more with whats holding you back.

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Capture Kismet - The Opinion Tribune

SYDNEY, Australia, March 30, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- We would like to thank the team atAuthority Sharksfor their research and findings in formulating this article.

Here areThe 10 Best Health & Wellness Coaches to Follow in Australia.

Ria Mestiza (@CoachRiaMestiza)Our first selection, Ria Mestiza, is the coach to ambitious high achievers ready to take control of their health who are seeking to achieve their best body and lifestyle for optimization and longevity. She is the Founder of Fitsique Wellness & Performance and the host of "Summon Your Superhuman" Podcast.

Ria teaches people how to own their mind and body and maximize on untapped inner strength and potential. Passionate about knowledge with an unparalleled commitment to growth both in her professional and personal endeavours. A decade of working with and learning from the "best of the best" her ever-evolving standards are World-Class.

She is truly an all-in-one health practitioner specializing in Remedial Therapy, Kinesiology and Energy-Based modalities. With over 20 years' experience in training & nutrition as a competitive athlete. Transforming clients and speaking to audiences all over the world she is dedicated to impact & inspiring a lifestyle beyond expectations.

Dr Zara Celik (@DrZaraCelik)Our second selection, Dr Zara Celik - an integrative health & nutrition practitioner, wellness expert, high performance coach, and Founder of Multi-Award Winning Amara Wellness Centre - dedicates her life to empowering & educating women to embrace their individualities and thrive in all aspects of life.

She helps top CEOs, entrepreneurs, business owners, celebrities and elite athletes around the globe to have equanimity, homeostasis and internal equilibrium, which is the foundation to peak performance. Dr Zara offers customised wellness programs specifically designed for every single client to meet their individual needs, ensuring that all her clients are educated, supported, guided and empowered every step of the way throughout their journeys. Her clients have full access directly to her anytime during and after the program.

Dr Zara supports people to become the best version of themselves so they can thrive and live a meaningful life. Find out more and contact Dr Zara Here

Samantha Doyle (@SamanthaDoyle)Our third selection, Mother of four, yoga therapist, and Ayurvedic wellness coach, Samantha Doyle is known for her gentle, simple, and effective approach to behaviour change. Samantha is the founder of Live to Serve Academy, a health and wellness platform which aims to educate and inspire people to live a vibrant, meaningful life.

Having worked with thousands of women, across 10 different countries over the past decade, her offerings aim to serve the whole person - helping people find life and purpose beyond their health challenges. Her unique method has shown notable success with healing emotional eating and other complex patterns of behaviour. Samantha has shared the stage with influential industry leaders such as Dr. Robert Svoboda, Amadea Morningstar, Dr Vignesh Devraj, and MC Yogi.

Download your free Ayurvedic Wellness Guides here and start your holistic health journey today.

Cherry Farrow (@CherryFarrow)Our fourth selection, Cherry Farrow - Motivational Speaker, International bestselling author, NLP Master Trainer, Stage Hypnotist, Master Coach, and CEO of Successful Minds Institute - works with individuals,organizations and education institutions to strengthen and elevate their communication, connection and confidence to new heights, so they can positively impact the world.

Cherry's down-to-earth humour makes her a highly sought after "edutainer". She engages groups from the moment she steps in and leaves them with empowering tools and mindsets that they can use to coach themselves to their desired successes. Cherry is passionate about awakening people to their limiting beliefs that keep them mediocre and helping them take their careers, business, and themselves personally & professionally to unprecedented levels.

Cherry's mission is to have at least one family member in every home certified at the NLP Master Practitioner level. To find out more about Cherry & book a Master Your Mindset Action Plan session, visit Here

Tara Doherty (@TaraDoherty)

Our fifth selection, Tara Doherty, is an integrative health professional and founder of the health and wellness practice, Endless Vitality. Her signature Men's Cleanse program gives men the personalised support they need to overcome many of their most compelling and uncomfortable health complaints.

Men who are overweight, overwhelmed and under-performing, are extremely responsive to Tara's science-based system that gets them lean, laser-focused and feeling happier. A customised nutrition and exercise plan works to heal the microbiome, improve mental focus, sleep quality, virility and weight loss, without feeling hungry or deprived.

Tara wants you to live life well and find your endless vitality by focussing on five interlocking principles:Rewiring the brain for success; Removing unwanted weight; Rebalancing hormones; Resetting circadian rhythms and Recalibrating deep connection.

Click here to connect with Tara and join a supportive community on a mission to reclaim their health and vitality.

Jess Jasch (@JessJasch)Our sixth selection, Jess Jasch, is podcast host of Get Jasched and founder of J-Leigh, a Success Coaching service that dives deep into high-level empowerment work to impact positive change in health and wellbeing. Through epigenetic biology, mindset, and embodiment tools, Jess helps leaders from all over the world gain a deeper understanding of their needs on a biological and soul level, so they can tap into their unique version of success and realise more of it. Since she comes from a tertiary-qualified corporate communication and public relations background, through to trauma-informed yoga teaching, including her Masters of Life Coaching and NLP, Jess has spent the past 5 years helping clients building all important communication skills, and cultivating emotional intelligence that garners confidence to live a fully expressed, empowered life.If you're a leader and looking for a life-empowering coaching program for your success, contact Jess via the J-Leigh website.

Suzanne Ingleton (@YourInnerCalmCoach)

Our seventh selection, Suzanne Ingleton, is the creator of the famous 5in4 Weight Loss Program. Suzanne specialises in helping women who have tried everything to lose weight and finally get the results they want.

The program works because it transforms the way women eat, think and live using Hypnosis, Time-Line Therapy and Mind Body Eating Psychology.

5in4 has helped hundreds of women change their relationship with food and let go of negative emotions which have "literally been weighing them down".

Suzanne's background as a Personal Trainer combined with her Coaching and Master NLP skills create a powerful program that ensures women lose weight easily and keep it off for good.

If you're a woman who wants to lose weight book a FREE 30min Consultation NOW.

Emma Blake (@EmmaBlake)

Our eight selection, Emma, is the founder of Mind Body Soul Wellness. Her mission is to facilitate a safe space for her clients' healing journeys. Emma empowers her clients to reconnect with their heart & soul, raise their awareness & energetic vibrations. She also facilitates a number of modalities & processes allowing clients to heal Mindy, Body and Soul. Emma offers a range of reiki energy healing sessions, 1:1 Coaching Programs and Online Group Programs.

Emma works with women to take them from a place of lacking self love and worth, having a scarcity mindset around relationships, to a place of loving & rediscovering their self worth to create empowering relationships.

In 2020 Emma was nominated for a number of community awards and was runner-up in the 2020 Ausmumpreneur People's Choice Award for Making a Difference in Health & Wellness.

Emma's newest online group program, Evol-ve, is a journey to creating the ultimate relationship with self.

Claire Davis (@ClaireDavis)

Our ninth selection, Claire, is a personal mindset coach and trainer at Claire Davis Coaching, a mother of 3, and is passionate about helping other Mums find themselves again by assisting them to release negative emotions from the past, remove limiting decision that are holding them back and create new strategies that work towards leading them in to a compelling future of abundance.

Claire's qualifications include Master NLP Coach as well as Master in Time Line Therapy, Neuro Linguistic Programming and Hypnosis. Claire is a recognized NLP Coach and Trainer by the American Board of Hypnotherapy and NLP. Claire believes that the best and fastest way to help more people is by training others to go on and do the same through her 4 in 1 NLP Practitioner and Modern Hypnosis training.

Claire's motto is To be the Change'. Go to Coach 4 Mums to check out her reviews.

Toni Dingle (@ToniDingle)

Our tenth selection, Toni Dingle, is the founder of That Gut Feeling, an online coaching service that helps women give their children the best start in life, both physically and mentally, by taking a holistic approach to gut health.

"Each new generation is faced with more and more health concerns. Be it chronic illness, developmental delays, behavioural problems, or skin conditions," Toni says, "I have seen firsthand the power that improving gut health can have. Not only for children, but for mothers too."

Toni offers a three-tier program that transforms the way women view health, and supports lifestyle changes that lead to a healthier gut and happier home. The program provides education, support and accountability so that women are able to THRIVE in life, health and motherhood, rather than simply survive it.

Toni's mission is to build a community of like-minded women to help change the trajectory of health for future generations.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/b3837eed-09de-4184-aabb-1d4176c7d639

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The 10 Greatest Health & Wellness Coaches in Australia - Benzinga

Woman must not accept; she must challenge. She must not be awed by that which has been built up around her; she must reverence that woman in her which struggles for expression. (Margaret Sanger)

Most of us grew up in a world we have basic civil rights and amazingly, we still live in a world where some women dont have them. Women are not making it to the top of any profession anywhere in the world. The numbers tell the story quite clearly, 190 heads of the state 9 are women. Of all the people in the parliament in the world, 13 percent are women. In the corporate sector, women at the top-level jobs, board seats, tops out at 15 to 16 percent. The numbers have actually not moved since 2002 and are going in the wrong direction.

Even in the non- profit world, a world we sometimes think of as being led by more women, women at the top, are just 20 percent. We also have another problem, which is that women face harder choices between profession success and personal fulfillment. So, the question is, how are we going to fix this? How do we change these numbers at the top? How do we make this different? The answer to this is, keeping women in the workforce. The problem is that women are dropping out.If women do want to stay in the work force, there are three important messages: 1.Sit at the table 2.Make your partner a real partner 3.Dont leave before you leaveWomen systematically underestimate their own abilities, if you test men and women and ask them questions on totally objective criteria like GPAs, men get it wrong slightly high, and women get it wrong slightly low. Women do not negotiate for themselves in the workforce. A study shows that 57 percent of men entering the workforce negotiate for their salaries while only 7 percent women negotiate for their salaries. And most importantly men attribute their success to themselves while women attribute it to the external factors. Because no one gets to the corner office by sitting on the side, and not at the table, and no one gets the promotion if they dont think that they deserve their success, or they dont even understand their own success. Womens empowerment can be defined to promoting womens sense of self-worth, their ability to determine their own choices, and their right to influence social change for themselves and others. Many organizations across the country are working towards this goal of empowering women and making them self-reliant. But its not that simple, because what the data shows, above all else, is one thing, which is that success and likeability are positively corelated for men and negatively corelated for women. We need to believe in ourselves, to reach for the promotion, to sit at the table, and we have to do it in a world, where for them there are sacrifices, they will make for that. We have got to get women to sit at the table.Women have made more progress being in the workforce than they have beingat home. The data shows this very clearly, if a woman and a man work full-time, and have a child, the woman does twice the amount of housework the man does, and the woman does three times the amount of childcare the man does. For people of both genders, if we are going to even things out and let women stay in the workforce, this has to change. Studies show that household with equal earnings and equal responsibility also have half the divorce rate. And if that wasnt good enough motivation for everyone out there, they also have more, they know each other more in the biblical sense as well. There is a really deep irony, to the fact that actions women are taking, with the objective of staying in the workforce actually lead to their eventually leaving. But the point is that what happens once you start kind of quietly leaning back? Every woman has been through this, once she givesbirth to her child, her job has to be really an inspiring one to make her go back to work. Because its hard to leave a child at home. Your job needs to be challenging, it needs to be rewarding, you need to feel like you are making a difference. And if you didnt take that promotion and some guy next to you did, if you stopped looking for new opportunities, if you are going to be bored, because you should have kept your foot on the gas pedal, the ambition has to drive the women. They need to stay in there and stop leaving before time.Women need to keep their foot on the gas pedal until the very day they need to leave to take a break for a child and then make the decision. Decisions should not be made too far in advance, particularly the ones women are not even conscious that they are making. My generation, really, sadly, is not going to change the numbers at the top. They are just not moving, we are not going to get to where 50 percent of the population in my generation, there will not be 50 percent of women at the top of any industry. But Im hopeful that future generations can. I think of a world that was run where half of the countries and our companies were run by women, would be a better world. I think it would be a better world. Once the glass ceiling has been broken, it can never be put back together, however, one would try to do that. The primary victims of all civil wars, are women and children. All these men and women should be free to decide, whether they do or do not want to conceive a child and they should be able to use one of the birth control methods to act on their decision. Over one billion people use birth control without any hesitation at all. Some people worry that the real goal of family planning is to control populations, but these are all side issues that have attached themselves to this core idea that men and women should be able to decide when they want to have a child. And as a result, birth control has almost completely and totally disappeared from the global health agenda. In Uttar Pradesh the largest state of India, their contraception rate is 29%, so what we have created as a world has become a life and death crisis. There are 100,000 women who say they dont want to be pregnant and they die in child birth.India is amongst the nations where women are still not safe, it is necessary to bring the woman empowerment more than ever. The micro-level studies that were commissioned by the Department of Women & Child Development, has made it evident that there is a need for re-framing policies for access to the quality of employment. Strategies will be designed to enhance the capacity of women and empower them to meet the negative social and economic impacts, which may flow from the globalization process. Globalization has presented new challenges for the realization of the goal of womens equality, the gender impact of which has not been systematically evaluated.

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Empowering Women is The Only Choice - Brighter Kashmir