NextBillion.net - Development Through Enterprise - Women at the BOP - Comments

Pulse Wire

Tayo Akinyemi — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 13:46:00 -0400

Hi Cynthia,

Thank you so much for your insightful commentary. I have looked at Pulse Wire's beta site and would be very interested in participating.

I wasn't able to find your email address on world pulse's website but please feel free to send me an email via nextbillion.

Women in BOP

Cynthia Casas — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 15:59:26 -0400

Hello, I was on the WRI website looking for some staff member on the next billion program to connect with face to face while I'm in DC-- when I stumbled upon your intriguing blog on women and the bop. The org I work for is World Pulse and it's a new hybrid organization (for and non-profit mix) dedicated to bringing the voices of women in developing countries to the proverbial table through various channels. We're starting with developing pulsewire.net, which is essentially using Web 2.0 technology to connect global north women to global south women. I, as many experts do, believe that the best leverage for a healthy community is empowerment of women. So your questions basically point to my conclusions too: If we see the evidence of empowering women so clearly in general economic development terms then why can't the same apply by investing in business women at the base of the pyramid? Perhaps we won't see the same results since they may take their profits and plow them back into supporting her family instead of growing her business. Tempting to say, but I give business women a lot more credit than that. This dialogue needs more minds focused on it, I agree. I invite you to bring your provocative questions to the pulsewire.net space once it's launched. If you're interested in being part in the creation of it, please email me-- we'd love to have your thinking in building this platform during our beta test phase. best, cynthia PS if there's someone in DC with whom i can talk to about next billion in respect to empowering women, please email me; I'm also willing to connect over the phone.

Women at the BOP

Tayo Akinyemi — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 15:42:44 -0400

In my old age I’ve come to understand that points of ideological contention can be very eye-opening. My friend Akwasi and I considered each other relatively liberal, like-minded urbanites until we had the “gender role” conversation. Yes, that one —the quintessential Mars/Venus debate. According to Akwasi, women have certain roles such as housekeeping and child-rearing and that they are obliged to fulfill. My view is somewhat more fluid: each party should perform the duties to which he or she is best suited, traditional expectations notwithstanding. I will spare you the details of the tete a tete, but I will share my rather rudimentary analysis of the subject.

After much hand-wringing and a rather ad-hoc consultation with my uncle in Lagos, I concluded that from a “historical” perspective, gender roles had (what I considered to be) relatively unambiguous utility. I reasoned that early man was suited to hunting and gathering due to his greater physical strength and size while early woman, as the child bearer, remained at home out of harm’s way. In my narrow rendering of the world, gender roles were simply a sensible expression of the division of labor. As the capitalist system developed, however, traditionally male roles became recognized by the market and female roles did not. Because we are pushing the boundaries that dictate gender roles, who does what, when, and for whom is now a much more complex question.

So what is the point of my idle musings apart from offending anthropologists, historians, scholars of gender studies - anyone with an informed opinion? Well, quite frankly, it begs the question of where women exist in capitalist society, and more specifically, where they exist at the BOP.

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