Be part of something extraordinary
![Have you registered for the 2024 ICA Global Cooperative Conference?](/sites/default/files/styles/full_image/public/2024-07/icanewdelhi2024_pop_up_ad_en_2.png?itok=9KJULHoq)
With open membership being one of the seven cooperative principles, promoting gender equality has been a key feature of the cooperative movement.
Among the first to give women the right to vote, cooperatives have enabled women to fulfil their potential. When the Rochdale Pioneers Equitable Cooperative Society was founded in 1844 women had the right to be full members.
The Women’s Cooperative Guild, which was set up in the UK in 1883, was actively involved in lobbying on a number of crucial issues such as introducing the minimum wage, equal pay, divorce laws, maternity benefits and initiating the white poppies campaign.
Through its Gender Equality Committee, the International Cooperative Alliance has also been active in pressing for progress at a global level. The ICA Strategy for Promoting Gender Equality was developed already in 1995 - the year of the adoption of the United Nations’ Beijing Declaration.
In February 2015 the ICA and the ILO carried out a survey to examine the perceptions among practitioners, academics, and members of NGO and government institutions concerning: the impact of cooperatives on women’s empowerment and gender equality generally and in comparison to other business forms; the challenges ahead. In total, 581 participants responded to the online survey, 75% of whom said they believed cooperatives had improved participation of women over the past 20 years.
Today women continue to face challenges when it comes to equal access to education, health care, decent work, and representation in political and economic decision-making processes. Achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls is one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which the ICA is supporting.
2020 marks the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action which recognised the multiple benefits of cooperatives. Now, it is time for the UN and international cooperative development sector to increase and prioritise aid to key development actors that strengthen women's economic, social and political empowerment.
As economic actors, considering gendered norms, women continue to earn less, are more likely to partake in unpaid labour and more apt to be excluded from decent work. However, we must remind people that, when women establish or join cooperatives, they perform innovative labour activities, earning higher incomes and increasing their business performance and competitiveness. Joining cooperatives increases their decision-making in the household, and improves their participation and empowerment within community affairs - given that cooperatives, as people-centred enterprises focus on inclusive employment enabling at large women who suffer multi-faceted inequalities
Some examples show how this can be done.