Celebrating International Women's Day 2014
On March 8, thousands upon thousands of people will celebrate International Women's Day. Since the early 1900s, International Women's Day (IWD) has gained popularity across the globe as more and more nations see women's equality as critical across all aspects of life. Conferences and other events are held the weeks prior and following IWD, with many nations even designating the day an official holiday, equivalent to Mother's Day.
For the field of international development, IWD is a particularly important day. It is a day that brings the community together—in person, via the Twittershpere, and across all channels of communication, to celebrate, recognize, reflect, and plan. IWD brings to light the reality that in many nations, women are still not afforded equal status to men—socially, politically, and economically.
As development practitioners, we realize that days like IWD offer us a chance to step back and adjust our lenses—to look at our work from a broader, cross-cutting perspective. In honor of International Women's Day, and in recognition that gender is one of our largest cross-cutting issues, we're highlighting the most important tools, guidance, and other resources in moving gender equality forward across multiple sectors. We hope you'll browse through these resources and take a moment to think about how you can further promote women's advancement and equality throughout the world.
GEM 2012 Global Women’s Report: The GEM Global Women’s Report offers an in-depth view of women who start and run businesses around the world. It provides both a broadly global and a comprehensively detailed foundation for guiding future research, policy decision making and the design of initiatives and programs that can enhance awareness about women entrepreneurship.
The Gender-GEDI Index Pilot Study: The Global Entrepreneurship and Development Institute’s women’s entrepreneurship index – the Gender-GEDI – measures the development of high-potential female entrepreneurship worldwide. Defined as “innovative, market expanding, and export oriented,” this gender specific Index utilizes GEDI’s unique framework, methodology, and global approach in order to capture the multi-dimensional aspects of entrepreneurial development.
Women's Entrepreneurial Venture Scope: The Women's Entrepreneurial Venture Scope assesses the environment for supporting and growing women's micro, small, and medium-sized businesses in Latin America and the Caribbean. It is a dynamic benchmarking model that measures business operating risks, access to finance, capacity and skill-building opportunities, and the presence of social services./p>
Catalyzing Growth in the Women-Run Small and Medium Enterprises Sector (SMEs): Evaluating the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women Initiative: The International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) conducted an initial evaluation of the seminal Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women initiative in India to identify early results of the program on women entrepreneurs’ business skills, practices and growth.