Impactful Partnerships bringing about Women’s Economic Empowerment

Are you curious how your business could better support your female employees? There might be an opportunity for you to get some support with this.
Women Win, an international fund for women’s rights, is steadily expanding its influence in the floriculture sector in East Africa. Through their program funded by the Dutch government they support floriculture businesses in their journey to empower the women working in their business.
Gender equality has been an important topic in international trade for quite some time now. In a sector like the floriculture sector, where majority of the workforce consists of women, the topic couldn’t be more relevant.
“We often see in this sector that although there are many women employed by the sector, it’s often the flexible, informal and lowest ranked and paid jobs that these women are in” explains Joan Nyaki, Programme Coordinator East Africa at Women Win. “It’s these women that we are trying to reach and support together with our local Women’s Rights partners in our program called Building Bridges for Women’s Economic Empowerment’. In close collaboration with the Kenyan Flower Council, Women Win has successfully worked together with 7 flower farms in the last year and continues to do so. The program offers a variety of tools and resources for producers in the flower sector, such as the Drawing the Line assessment, Collaborating for Impact projects and Gender Mainstreaming.
1. Drawing the Line (DTL) Tool
This is a gender-lens tool which puts women workers at the center of the conversation. The tool enables women to prioritize their needs and identify solutions that their farm management can implement. The tool uses illustrated cards ( as seen in the picture here) to facilitate discussions with the general workers in a focus group discussion set up and conducted in a safe and playful environment. The discussion is facilitated by trained Women’s Rights Organizations, WROs and takes 2-3 hours. The WRO then drafts and share a report on the findings of the DTL activity with the farm management who give their feedback on the findings. Hereafter, the farm management selects one or two of the top 3 priority needs identified by the workers which they will address through a partnership with a WRO in a project known as ‘Collaborating For Impact’, CFI Project In one of the farms where we implementing the DTL, one of the priority areas was “to have access to health care (including reproductive healthcare) for me and my family when we need.” The CFI project focused on Menstrual Hygiene Management as requested by the farm management. This included training on menstrual hygiene for general workers including men, gender committee and management and the review of gender and menstrual hygiene policies.

One of the managers from a flower farm said that, ‘the drawing the line is highly recommended for other farms because it has a bottom up management approach which engages the workers and also brings out other issues they face in the farm.’

We plan to implement the DTL assessment in 3-5 interested flower farms on a cost share arrangement in partnership with Women Rights Organizations, WROs in the coming few months.
2. Collaborating for Impact, CFI Project
As a follow up to the Drawing the Line, DTL report generated after the assessment for management, WROs develop and implement mini projects in close collaboration with the farm management to address the priority needs identified by the women workers. So far 3 project have been successfully completed in 3 flower farms and 3 more are planned for the next few months in flower farms that have implemented the DTL on a match funding basis, and in partnership with Women Rights Organizations.
Some examples of CFI projects done are trainings for general workers on Menstrual Hygiene Management, supplying menstrual products to general workers, Financial Literacy, Leadership and Gender training
3. Gender Mainstreaming

Under this activity we engage Women’s Rights Organizations, WROs to work with flower farms to review their gender policies and raise awareness about gender at management and staff levels at the workplace. We currently have a model gender policy developed last year (2021) that is currently available to flower farms in Kenya.

In the coming months we will be engaging a WRO to review policies and conduct gender trainings and invite farms who show interest in the programme to participate. Kenya Flower Council also be leading in monitoring Gender Action Plans in the flower farms and thereafter compile best practices to be disseminated to their member farms. We currently have slots for a limited number of farms for these two activities for farms that show interest.

The aim of the forum was to create a space where KFC and its member farms get to know the WROs and the work they do, and see potential areas where they can form partnerships that promote women’s economic resilience.

About the Programme: Building Bridges for Women’s Economic Empowerment, BBWEE Programme 2020-2024 Women Win is a global women’s fund, based in The Netherlands. Our global team works with partners, grantees, and funders in over 50 countries around the world. We are guided by the vision of a future where every woman and girl exercise their rights.

The BBWEE is a five-year programme implemented by one of Women Win’s brands known as Win-Win Strategies with the aim to advance women’s economic rights and resilience in the floriculture and other supply chains through impactful partnerships and innovative approaches Now in its third year, the programme has been implementing 3 main activities: DTL assessment, the Collaborating for Impact, CFI projects and Gender Mainstreaming in the Floriculture sector in Kenya.