Kamela Sediqi

Kamela Sediqi sits at her laptop and builds her business, in a small office hidden behind a gate in Kabul. The unlikely entrepreneur is the architect of Kaweyan Business Development Services, a consulting firm she started in 2004 with only her computer and her determination.
Barely 30 and on her third startup, Sediqi employs 25 men and women, more than half of them full time. She started her first venture, a tailoring business, to support her mother and brother during Taliban rule.
In the end, it provided work for more than 100 women. And it gave Sediqi the entrepreneurial bug that eventually led her to Kaweyan--a service firm that had few capital needs at the outset.
Now, traveling across the country on buses and planes operating on unpredictable schedules, Sediqi trains adults in the basics that will help them launch their own ventures. Over a few days, Sediqi teaches skills ranging from developing an idea to marketing and accounting. Many participants go on to start their own businesses, The Christian Science Monitor reported.
Sediqi’s goal is to grow Kaweyan into one of South Asia’s leading consultancies. Longtime clients say they are impressed with Sediqi’s growth--and see her gender as an opportunity in this segregated society.
“With her training materials and her approach, she is able to put her clients at ease,“ says Bryan Rhodes, head of a US Agency for International Development program to grow Afghan small business. “And [being female] opens up a market segment.... She can train men and women where others cannot.“
The success of Sediqi and a handful of other Afghan businesswomen come amid difficult circumstances, despite steady growth in the overall economy.
In the face of a resurgent Taliban, stagnant reconstruction, and the high-profile kidnappings of foreign aid workers, these women push forward, propelled by entrepreneurial grit and desire to support their families.
While no official figures track their numbers, they can be found in pockets of Afghanistan, launching consultancies, furniture factories, and printing houses. Many of them say better business conditions, rather than more talk of their plight, are critical.
“Business is the only way to support Afghanistan,“ says Sediqi, noting that the foreign money now funding the country soon will dry up. “We can make our country by establishing businesses and supporting businesses and creating more investment.“
Government officials say business is critical to women’s advancement as well as Afghanistan’s, tracing some of the stubbornness of the hurdles they face to an “externally injected“ aid effort.
“The women’s thing here, particularly with the international community, is very politicized,“ says Omar Zakhilwal, president of the Afghanistan Investment Support Agency.
He added, “It is more of a show than substance. We should focus on meaningful economic progress, and that is sustainable economic development.“
Aid workers argue that the social structure makes bringing women into the fold a struggle.
“Our entrepreneurship program comes from very strong market analysis, which does make it more difficult to incorporate women because the range of activities that women can undertake for cultural reasons is very constrained,“ says Joanne Trotter of the Aga Khan Development Network.

Investing in young women and girls in developing regions must be a top priority for governments, multilateral agencies and the private sector, say the authors of a report released recently in the US.
Titled, “Girls Count: A Global Investment & Action Agenda,“ the 89-page report highlighted the systematic disadvantages faced by girls and women in developing countries in areas ranging from health, education, and nutrition to workforce participation and the burden of household tasks, according to IPS.
Countries that do not address these significant disparities risk perpetuating a “cycle of poverty“ within their populations, the report said--yet by investing in women and girls, countries can reap significant benefits in the spheres of political and economic development.
Among the report’s proponents is former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and former president of Ireland Mary Robinson.
“This report is a call to action,“ Robinson said. “It challenges institutions in all sectors to take a fresh look at their investments and consider where adolescent girls have been built in. The truth is they haven’t been, and ignoring that will come at a great price to us all.“
Although addressing poverty is already key development priority, young women and girls in less developed regions are even more vulnerable to poverty’s impact, said the report, which was co-authored by experts from the Center for Global Development (CGD), the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), American University, and the Population Council.
Approximately one-sixth of the world’s young people live on less than two dollars a day, the report said. This level of extreme poverty determines the lives and possibilities for many young women and girls, such as the 122 million girls in sub-Saharan Africa who live on less than one dollar a day.
Without adequate skills and training, and without access to economic self-sufficiency, many girls in developing countries enter into child marriages. One in seven girls in developing countries marry by age 15, and in 15 countries throughout South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, almost half of all girls are married before age 18, the report said.
Educating girls and providing them with skills training and social services will springboard their potential as young women, while also contributing to a country’s political and economic development, the report said.

Government of India approved a proposal for enhancing the maternity benefit given to working women from Rs 250 to Rs 1,000.
The Union Cabinet gave the go-ahead for introduction of a Bill in parliament for amending the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961 to provide for enhancing the maternity bonus, PTI said.
“The existing ceiling of Rs 250 as maternity bonus under Maternity Benefit Act, 1961 is inadequate in the present economic scenario,“ Information and Broadcasting Minister P R Dasmunsi told reporters.
He added, “Hence, there is an urgent need to increase the amount to Rs 1,000 so that it could be a source of financial support to working women as far as maternity benefits are concerned“.

Some 1,200 women are killed and 2 million injured annually in domestic violence in the US.

Nearly a quarter of US women suffer domestic violence, US health officials reported, with ongoing health problems that one activist likened to the effects of living in a war zone.
Some men also experience domestic violence, a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention survey found, Reuters said.
The CDC said 23.6 percent of women and 11.5 percent of men reported being a victim of what it called “intimate partner violence“ at some time in their lives.
The CDC defined this as threatened, attempted or completed physical or sexual violence or emotional abuse by a spouse or former spouse.
The CDC estimates that 1,200 women are killed and 2 million injured in domestic violence annually.
Many of these women have other long-term health risks and problems, the CDC said.
“It confirms ... that living in a dangerous and stressful environment has long-term health impacts. It’s like living in a war zone,“ said Rita Smith, executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, an advocacy group.
More than 70,000 people in 16 US states and two territories--Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands--responded to the CDC survey in 2005.
Black women were more likely to report domestic violence than whites or Hispanics.
Women of all income and education levels suffer such abuse, although it was more frequent among the poorest and those who attended but did not graduate from college.

Although demand for employees with technical skills has jumped in the 21st century, the overall percentage of jobs held by women in technical fields has declined in recent years.

Female scientists, engineers and product developers still face barriers in climbing the career ladder due to a lack of role models, mentors and access to networks, according to a new study.
Even though there has been some progress since the beginning of the decade, the US nonprofit research group Catalyst said certain issues remain problematic for women in the high-tech workforce.
It found that two areas in particular were critical--the interaction with their supervisors and the lack of opportunities to voice their opinions in the decision-making process, Reuters reported.
“I think that there are unique challenges that technical women face, because it is such an incredibly male dominated sphere,“ said Heather Foust-Cummings, who headed the research group.
Although demand for employees with technical skills has jumped in the 21st century, the overall percentage of jobs held by women in technical fields has declined in recent years, according to the study.
Catalyst warned that the concerns raised by the women in the study represent substantial obstacles in the increasingly competitive battle for talent in the industry.
“People join companies, but leave supervisors,“ said Debbie Soon, a vice president at Catalyst.
“In high-tech organizations people who have great technical skill often advance into managerial roles, and while these folks may be stellar technicians, they are often not given the support and training to enable them to be equally good managers,“ she said.
The main complaint of women about their supervisors was that they weren’t available when needed, didn’t give regular feedback and weren’t responsive to suggestions.
The study included employee-satisfaction surveys from 21 global high-tech companies and an online study of almost 500 respondents.
Catalyst said companies should focus on more face-to-face training for managers, as well as programs that address different leadership styles.

Basketball players practicing in Tehran

There is a serious shortage of bus drivers in Norway, and the National Labour Office (NAV) has started a course in Oslo, designed to qualify immigrant women to become bus drivers.
Norwegian bus companies lack more than one thousand qualified drivers. At the same time the unemployment rate is higher among women immigrants than among women in general, said Norwaypost.no.
That is why NAV Oslo decided to open a driving course reserved for immigrant women.
Peili Liu, a 39-year-old Chinese, says curves are the most difficult, when
driving a 12 meter long and 13 tons heavy bus.

A group of Nepali women from varied caste backgrounds aim to conquer Everest this spring helped by the fastest person to climb the mountain, the group’s leader said.
The First Inclusive Women Sagarmatha Expedition 2008 (FIWSE 2008) will see 10 female climbers attempt to reach the roof of the world helped by a crew of support staff--including porters and mule drivers--comprising mostly of women, AFP reported.
“This expedition will be the first of its kind in terms of the new roles played by women,“ Sushmita Maskey, the expedition coordinator said at a press conference in Kathmandu.
Nepal is a strongly Hindu country and remains strictly divided along caste lines, but the FIWSE team contains a spectrum of members, including women from widely-excluded ethnic minority groups to Brahmins who are at the top of the hierarchy.
Pemba Sherpa, who holds the world record for the fastest summit after reaching the top in eight hours ten minutes in 2004, is one of eight male high altitude guides who will be assisting in the expedition.
“Our objective, besides climbing Everest, is to encourage women to pursue their dreams in all fields; education, adventure, medicine or any other field,“ Maskey said.
The women, aged between 17 and 31, will also carry out research into the effects of climate change on the Himalayas, where global warming is believed to be melting glaciers at a rate of up to 20 meters per year.
The United Nations Development Program and World Food Program are sponsoring the expedition, but the group still only has half the $200,000 cost, Maskey said.
Only two of the 10 climbers have experience of mountains above 8,000 meters (26,400 feet), but trainer Da Gombu Sherpa is confident they can reach the 8,848-meter summit.