Papua Women

The equality between men and women has been a topic widely disputed among many nations. According to a statistic from the 2010 World Bank, only 20 out of 128 economies worldwide have equal rights for women and men. This has created a wide economic gender gap. especially since only 1% of the world's wealth comes from women when they comprise more than 50% of the world's population.

I really like WomenWatch organization because they track the progress and accomplishments of women across the globe. They showcase a variety of ways in which women have been empowered throughout the world. One of the stories that I found was about women in Papua, Indonesia.

This is an area where tribal culture is strong and this includes the domination of women by men. The International Fund for Agricultural Development created a project to empower women. This project has been advertised as the "planting roots of independence." According to the IFAD, women are excluded from education and decision-making. They had to help the women form groups so that they could extract them from the isolated domestic life. However, this action was faced by resilience.

"When we first went to some of the target villages, the women were even angry because the men would put pressure on them not to form independent farmers' groups," said Sigit Darmawanto, PNPM Provincial Coordinator for West Papua. (According to IFAD).

However, they made a breakthrough by granting the women money to start-up a business for earning a profit when fish prices were low. This helped them find ways to be empowered in a male-dominated region and find their own way to break free of oppression.