Written by Glenda Monge Alvarado
Talks about sustainability with a gender focus are rarely found. Although gender equality is one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), it’s still somehow difficult to conceive how that focus should exist in female empowerment. That’s the reason why SEE Women was born, a Latin-American movement that promotes gender equality by providing women with solutions intended to help them have more control over their lives, as citizens, consumers, and economic subjects. All that under a “sustainable women” concept.
Empowerment isn’t something that can be done or transfer automatically. What can be provided and developed, are the tools and strategies to help each woman find their reasons to drive empowerment, this has been known since the beginning by the founders and has played a core role in their service design. To start closing that gap, it’s key to understand two aspects first: women must be able to conciliate their priorities and necessities, and their most active role must be reinforced by men too. It’s imperative to bring the second component to the table, since it’s not a zero addition game, it’s about following a healthy process to really close the gender gap, that aligns with alternative power types: can do it for, can do it with, and can do it from the the inside.
The fact that SEE Women has dedicated their efforts to promote a “sustainable woman” has concrete reasons. It starts with acknowledging the fact that the current development models urge a change to move towards sustainability and decreasing carbon footprint. That, and the statistical results and news showed by simply typing “woman” or “1.5” in your browser, exposes a reality that made SEE Women believe that increasing female participation in different areas as citizens, consumers or economic subjects is necessary. And it’s equally important to nurture that participation under an SDG and economy decarbonization approach.
Along with those efforts and objectives, we believe that there must be a deep connection between that momentum created by empowerment and the actual decision taken by our community to generate real traction and benefit sustainability’s three dimensions- social, economic, and the environment- equally.
That theory is now starting to exist in practice by basing all of their efforts on three main topics:
- Inspire by showcasing the efforts of men and women working together for sustainability, against global warming and advocating causes to ensure equality.
- Educate with workshops and talks.
- Connect people with industries, and industries with industries with events. Those efforts help us create a model to escalate our central concept – a sustainable woman – on both personal and organizational levels. That’s why we offer three programs through corporate social responsibility related to integral sustainability, eco-efficiencies and green businesses; sustainable leadership and entrepreneurship, all of them with a gender focus.
For now, it all comes down to what’s going to happen in August 2019, when SEE Women will be presenting the results obtained at the First Commercial Summit: Sustainable Women. The summit is a space that will also promote networking among the different industries adding up to gender equality.
SEE Women is a business extension of SEE Investing, a young business created to increase social responsibility by promoting high impact projects based on urban and social acupuncture.
