By Kenzie Love
As the world marked International Women’s Day this year with a theme of “For ALL Women and Girls: Equality. Rights. Empowerment,” it is clear that there is still considerable progress to be made in making this vision a reality. None of the markers around the Sustainable Development Goal (“SDG”) number five on Women’s Equality are in the met or almost-met category, and as the UN notes, “a continued failure to prioritize SDG 5 will put the entire 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in peril.”
Gender equality is also a key tenet of the international co-operative movement, and was cited as an objective both in the first UN-declared International Year of Co-operatives in 2012 and again this year, which received the same designation from the UN. A 2016 literature review found that “it is reasonable to surmise that given the right environment and support, co-operatives can play a major role in promoting and achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment.” As this review also found, however, “women are still feeling the impact of gender inequality in terms of participation, leadership, and access.” Thus it would appear that while the formation of more worker co-ops (and/or employment of more women in them) is a necessary step towards achieving gender equality, this change alone will likely be insufficient in fulfilling this goal.
Worker co-ops are just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to gender equality, and their effectiveness will depend in part on broader societal changes. But there are nonetheless some steps they can take now that could help bring these changes about.
As noted in the literature review, “data collected on women and co-operatives and women-run co-operatives is patchy at best,” and improving the collection of such data is a key recommendation. As Forbes magazine notes, “At its very core, data tells us what we need to do next. … Data shines a light on what’s possible and has the power to make it a reality.” Again, data collection alone won’t eliminate the barriers facing women in worker co-operatives. But evidence that what might seem like a reasonable surmise is actually a fact will bolster the case for worker co-ops as a tool of women’s empowerment.
Of course, more rigorous data collection would also likely reveal that even within the worker co-osector, pay disparities and underrepresentation of women in leadership positions continue to exist. As Xiomara Nuñez de Cespedes, chair of the International Cooperative Alliance’s Gender Equality Committee, observes “Sometimes we, in co-ops, say that women participate under equal conditions as men but this is not true. Many women face issues that limit their active participation in co-ops.” These issues are particularly acute for women who belong to other equity-denied groups, so “recognizing and addressing the unique challenges that intersect with women’s empowerment is crucial for creating a more inclusive and equitable society.”
As Anne-Brit Nippierd observes, the issues that limit women’s participation in worker co-ops are often similar to those that limit their participation in the economy as a whole, including social expectations around their role, lack of resources, and lack of legal protection. The case for eliminating these barriers is often made as an economic one: It is estimated that closing the gender gap could give the global economy a USD 7 trillion boost. But for worker co-ops, the more obvious rationale is genuinely fulfilling the co-op principles and values.
As Nippierd further observes, “the advancement of the status of women in cooperatives and in society in general has always been important to the international cooperative movement.” Advancement in both these areas is now needed as never before, not just for the benefit of women but for everyone.